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NATIONAL  ACADEMY  OF  SCIENCES 

BIOGRAPHICAL  MEMOIRS 

PART  OF  VOLUME  VIII 


BIOGRAPHICAL  MEMOIR 


OF 


JOHN  WESLEY  POWELL 
1834-1902 


BY 


W.  M.  DAVIS 


PRESENTED  TO  THE  ACADEMY  AT  THE  AUTUMN  MEETING, 


CITY  OF  WASHINGTON 

PUBLISHED  BY  THE  NATIONAL  ACADEMY  OF  SCIENCES 

February,  1915 


WASHINGTON,  D.  C. 

PRESS  OF  JUDD  &  DETWEII^R,  INC. 

I9IS 


JOHN  WESLEY  POWELL. 


JOHN  WESLEY  POWELL  was  in  more  senses  than  one  a  scien- 
tific frontiersman.  His  life  reveals  the  energetic  working  of  a 
vigorous  and  independent  personality,  not  trammeled  by  tradi- 
tional methods  and  not  so  deeply  versed  in  the  history,  the 
content,  and  the  technique  of  the  sciences  as  to  be  guided  by 
them,  but  impelled  to  the  rapid  discovery  of  new  principles  by 
the  inspiration  of  previously  unexplored  surroundings.  His 
life  shows  us  further  how  a  man  of  exceptional  power  rises 
suddenly  in  an  otherwise  undistinguished  lineage,  and  how  he 
surmounts  the  limiting  associations  of  early  years,  less  through 
the  opportunity  provided  by  others  than  through  opportunities 


Much  use  has  been  made  of  the  following  articles,  especially  of  the 
fifth,  in  which  many  details  of  Powell's  life  are  recorded.  In  a  number 
of  cases  extracts  from  these  articles  are  incorporated  in  the  present 
memoir,  with  single  quotation  marks  or  without  marks : 

John  Wesley  Powell,  by  W.  H.  Brewer.  Amer.  Journ.  Sci.,  XIV, 
1902,  pp.  377-382. 

In  memory  of  John  Wesley  Powell.  Minutes  of  a  meeting  held  at 
the  U.  S.  National  Museum.  Edited  by  S.  P.  Langley.  Science,  n.  s., 
XVI,  1902,  pp.  782-790. 

John  Wesley  Powell,  by  G.  K.  Gilbert.  Science,  n.  s.,  XVI,  1902,  pp. 
561-567,  with  portrait. 

John  Wesley  Powell,  by  G.  P.  Merrill.  Amer.  Geol.,  XXXI,  1903,  pp. 
327-333,  with  portrait.  ^ 

John  Wesley  Powell:  A  memorial  to  an  American  explorer  andj 
scholar.  Articles  by  M.  D.  Lincoln,  G.  K.  Gilbert,  Marcus  Baker,  and  \ 
Paul  Carus.  Edited  by  G.  K.  Gilbert  and  published  in  The  Open  Court^ 
Chicago,  1902-1903. 

John  Wesley  Powell :  Proceedings  of  a  meeting  commemorative  of 
his  distinguished  services.  Proc.  Washington  Acad.  Sci.,  V,  1903,  pp. 
99-130.  This  contains  a  portrait,  articles  by  G.  K.  Gilbert,  D.  B.  Hen- 
derson, S.  P.  Langley,  W  J  McGee,  C.  R.  Van  Hise,  and  C.  D.  Walcott, 
and  a  complete  bibliography  by  P.  C.  Warman. 

John  Wesley  Powell,  by  C.  D.  Walcott.  24th  Ann.  Kept.  U.  S.  Geol. 
Surv.,  1903,  pp.  271-287. 

John  Wesley  Powell :  A  brief  review  of  his  career.  Epilogue  from 
the  "The  Romance  of  the  Colorado  River,"  by  F.  S.  Dellenbaugh.  New 
York,  1902,  pp.  371-386. 

II 


NATIONAL   ACADEMY   BIOGRAPHICAL    MEMOIRS VOL.   VIII 

opened  by  his  own  individual  enterprise  for  the  satisfaction  of 
inborn  interests. 

EARLY  LIFE. 

Powell,  the  fourth  of  nine  children,  was  born  of  English 
parents  at  Mount  Morris,  in  the  Genesee  Valley  of  western 
New  York,  on  March  24,  1834.  His  father,  Joseph  Powell,  a 
Methodist  preacher,  and  his  mother,  Mary  Dean  Powell,  had 
come  to  the  United  States  a  short  time  before.  The  family 
moved  from  New  York  to  Jackson,  Ohio,  in  1838-1839,  to 
South  Grove,  Wisconsin,  in  1846,  and  eventually  to  Illinois, 
settling  first  at  Bonus  Prairie  in  1851,  and  later  at  Wheaton 
in  1854;  thus  in  Illinois  Powell  lived  from  his  seventeenth  to 
his  twenty-seventh  year. 

While  he  was  still  a  boy  in  Ohio  he  had  experience  of  anti- 
slavery  agitation.  His  father  was  a  staunch  abolitionist,  who 
did  not  conceal  his  opinions,  and  as  a  result  the  son  was  so 
unfairly  treated  by  his  mates  in  the  village  school  that  he  was 
removed  from  it  and  for  a  time  put  under  the  care  of  a  well- 
to-do  elderly  neighbor  named  Crookham,  who  taught  gratui- 
tously and  irregularly  in  a  log-house  school  and  laboratory,  as 
well  as  in  the  field.  It  was  thus  that  young  Powell  made  a  be- 
ginning in  scientific  study  and  observation.  When  the  move 
was  made  from  Ohio,  all  the  household  goods  were  transported 
in  a  wagon  and  two  carriages,  one  of  the  latter  being  driven 
by  young  John  to  Wisconsin.  There  the  boy,  when  his  father 
was  away  from  home  preaching,  had  the  duty  of  conducting 
the  farm,  from  which  the  family  derived  its  principal  support, 
and  of  hauling  farm  produce  to  markets,  five  or  six  days  to  a 
trip  and  twelve  or  more  trips  in  a  year;  but  his  heart  was  in 
his  studies,  and  in  the  winter  of  1850  he  went  to  Janesville, 
twenty  miles  from  home,  to  attend  school,  working  for  his 
keep  on  a  near-by  farm. 

In  1852  he  began  school  teaching,  with  half  his  pupils  older 
than  himself;  and  for  the  following  nine  years  he  alternately 
taught,  studied,  and  traveled.  He  had  the  good  fortune  at  the 
outset  of  this  laborious  period  to  fall  in  with  intelligent  school 
officials,  but  much  of  his  teaching  was  done  under  narrowing 
conditions  of  isolation  and  privation.  His  college  studies  were 

12 


j 
JOHN   WESLEY   POWELL — DAVIS 

varied ;  they  were  pursued  at  Illinois  College,  Jacksonville, 
1855-1856;  at  Oberlin  College,  Ohio,  1858,  where  he  studied 
chiefly  botany,  Latin,  and  Greek,  and  at  Wheaton  College  in 
1858.  Powell  was  a  naturalist  at  that  time,  fond  of  roaming, 
observing,  and  collecting.  He  had  joined  the  State  Society  of 
Natural  History  in  1854,  and  in  making  an  extensive  collection 
of  mollusca  he  crossed  most  of  the  prairie  States.  In  1856  he 
traveled,  a  young  fellow  of  twenty-two,  alone  in  his  boat  on 
the  Mississippi ;  the  next  year  he  descended  the  Ohio,  and  the 
year  after  he  followed  the  Illinois  and  Des  Moines  Rivers.  His 
collections  brought  him  into  relation  with  various  colleges ;  he 
became  secretary  of  the  Illinois  Society  of  Natural  History, 
and  his  friends  of  that  time  found  him  an  entertaining  nar- 
rator, full  of  enthusiasm,  humor,  and  philosophy. 

SERVICE   IN   THE   CIVIL   WAR. 

Powell's  studies  and  travels  were  interrupted  by  the  out- 
break of  the  Civil  War.  A  visit  to  the  South  on  a  lecturing 
tour  in  1860,  where. he  closely  studied  the  sentiment  of  the 
people  regarding  slavery,  had  persuaded  him  that  nothing 
short  of  war  could  settle  the  matter.  When  war  came  he 
promptly  enlisted  as  a  private  in  the  Twentieth  Illinois  Infan- 
try on  May  8,  1861,  "with  the  avowed  purpose  of  doing  his 
part  in  the  extinction  of  slavery  in  this  country ;  and  from  the 
first  day  after  the  call  was  made  for  troops  he  felt  thoroughly 
convinced  that  American  slavery  was  doomed."  He  went  to 
the  front  as  sergeant-major,  but  was  soon  commissioned  sec- 
ond lieutenant.  His  knowledge  of  engineering  led  him  into 
such  work  as  building  roads  and  bridges  and  planning  camps 
and  entrenchments.  In  the  winter  of  1861-1862  he  recruited 
a  company  of  artillery,  of  which  he  was  commissioned  captain. 
A  brief  leave  of  absence  in  March,  1862,  allowed  him  a  hurried 
visit  to  Detroit,  where  with  only  two  hours'  delay  he  married 
his  cousin,  Miss  Emma  Dean,  to  whom  he  had  been  long  en- 
gaged. She  returned  with  him  at  once  to  the  field,  and  cared 
for  him  not  long  afterward  when  he  was  wounded  in  the  battle 
of  Shiloh,  on  April  6,  1862.  At  the  moment  when  he  gave  a 
signal  to  fire  by  raising  his  right  arm  a  rifle  ball  struck  his 
wrist  and  glanced  toward  the  elbow.  The  hasty  care  at  first 

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NATIONAL   ACADEMY    BIOGRAPHICAL    MEMOIRS VOL.    VIII 

given  to  the  wound  was  followed  by  an  operation  which  left 
him  with  a  mere  stump  below  the  elbow,  from  which  he  suf- 
fered pain  for  many  years.  He  was  incapacitated  at  the  time 
for  several  months;  but  he  later  had  nearly  three  more  years 
c\f  active  service,  during  which  he  was  frequently  in  close  re- 
lations with  General  Grant  and  was  commissioned  as  major  of 
artillery.  When  finally  detailed  to  act  as  chief  of  artillery  he 
had  sixteen  batteries  under  his  command.  Among  the  busiest 
days  of  his  life  were  the  thirty  or  more  prior  to  the  fall  of 
Vicksburg,  in  March,  1864,  in  part  because  in  addition  to  his 
military  duties  he  collected  fossils  from  the  trenches.  He  was 
honorably  discharged  January  14,  1865,  and,  refusing  higher 
rank  then  offered,  was  known  as  "the  Major"  thereafter.  The 
wound  in  his  arm  gave  him  much  pain  at  various  later  periods 
'and  weakened  an  exceptionally  strong  constitution ;  not  until  a 
few  years  before  his  death  was  he  fully  relieved  by  a  success- 
ful operation  on  the  terminating  nerves.  Some  years  after  the 
war  he  met  a  Confederate  officer,  Col.  C.  E.  Hooker,  who  had 
lost  his  left  arm  at  Shiloh ;  the  two  officers  became  friends, 
and  when  either  one  in  later  years  bought  a  pair  of  gloves  he 
sent  the  unused  glove  to  his  former  enemy. 

There  can  be  little  question  that  a  school  teacher  of  scientific 
bent,  a  lone  rambler  over  prairies,  a  solitary  voyager  on  long 
rivers,  doing  his  own  work  as  boatman  and  collector  of  nat- 
ural-history specimens,  learned  much  from  the  responsibilities 
placed  upon  him  during  four  years  of  soldier's  life  in  the  way 
of  reaching  prompt  decision,  giving  authoritative  command, 
delegating  work  to  others,  and  securing  loyal  obedience  from 
his  subordinates.  It  does  not  follow  that  the  decisions  reached 
were  always  the  wisest  possible,  still  they  were  the  best  avail-- 
able, and  action  had  to  be  taken  on  them  without  hesitating 
deliberation.  But  Powell  hated  war,  in  spite  of  his  willing 
service  while  war  lasted;  fighting  was  to  him  an  uncivilized 
method  of  dealing  with  the  problems  of  civilization.  He  must 
as  an  officer  have  developed  many  qualities  that  stood  him  in 
good  stead  as  an  organizer  and  administrator  in  later  years; 
yet  it  may  be  well  asked  whether  his  faithful  perseverance 
under  adverse  conditions  during  nine  previous  years  of  study 
and  teaching  in  a  time  of  peace  were  not  equally  decisive  in 

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JOHN   WESLEY   POWELL — DAVIS 

developing  his  capacity  to  carry  through  whatever  he  under- 
took. 

VISIT  TO  THE  ROCKY  MOUNTAINS,   1867-1868. 

The  war  over,  Powell  returned  to  his  home  in  Illinois  and 
was  nominated  clerk  of  Du  Page  County,  Illinois,  at  a  good 
salary;  but  at  the  same  time  he  was  offered  an  appointment 
more  to  his  liking,  though  at  a  lower  salary,  as  professor  of 
geology  in  Illinois  Wesleyan  College,  at  Bloomington;  this  he 
accepted.  A  later  appointment  was  that  of  lecturer  and  curator 
of  the  museum  at  the  Illinois  Normal  University  at  Normal, 
near  Bloomington.  The  young  professor  took  his  classes  into 
the  field,  had  an  active  part  in  public  discussions  in  favor  of 
introducing  more  science  in  college  programs,  and  influenced 
the  State  legislature  to  advance  science  teaching  in  the  Normal 
University. 

In  the  summer  of  1867  Powell,  at  the  age  of  thirty-three, 
struck  out  on  a  new  path  that  led  to  all  his  later  work.  Aided 
by  the  Illinois  Society  of  Natural  History,  with  which  he  was 
still  connected,  he  conducted  a  party  of  sixteen  "naturalists, 
students,  and  amateurs"  across  the  plains  to  the  Rocky  Moun- 
tains of  Colorado,  then  known  more  as  a  field  for  adventure 
than  for  research.  His  wife  accompanied  him.  Through  the 
aid  of  General  Grant,  it  was  arranged  that  the  army  posts 
should  f urnish  his  party  with  supplies  at  government  rates ; 
railroads  gave  him  passes.  A  contemplated  passage  through 
the  Bad  Lands  under  military  escort  was  given  up  on  account 
of  hostile  Indians.  The  expedition  visited  South  and  Middle 
Parks,  climbed  Pikes  Peak  and  other  mountains,  and  gathered  a 
great  store  of  specimens  that  were  shipped  back  to  the  colleges 
at  Bloomington,  Normal,  and  elsewhere.  Powell  was  thus  the 
first  college  professor  to  combine  field  teaching  with  'western 
exploration,  and  this  enterprise  deservedly  opened  his  larger 
scientific  career.  He  remained  in  the  mountains  for  a  time 
after  his  students  went  home,  and  in  the  following  winter  pub- 
lished a  preliminary  report,  a  small  affair  of  four  pages,  ad- 
dressed to  the  Illinois  State  Board  of  Education  and  signed  as 
curator  of  the  Illinois  Natural  History  Society;  the  only  known 
copy  is  in  the  library  of  the^ United  States  Geological  Survey. 

15 


NATIONAL  ACADEMY   BIOGRAPHICAL    MEMOIRS — VOL.   VIII 

He  returned  to  Colorado  with  another  party  in  the  summer  of 
1868,  this  time  with  aid  from  certain  colleges  in  Illinois,  and 
from  the  Smithsonian  Institution  in  Washington,  and  again 
with  authority  for  getting  provisions  from  military  posts.  He 
passed  the  summer  in  the  region  of  Middle  Park.  The  follow- 
ing winter,  Mrs.  Powell  still  being  in  the  party,  was  spent  in 
camp  in  the  valley  of  White  River,  a  branch  of  Green  River,  in 
western  Colorado  and  eastern  Utah.  From  this  camp  Powell 
made  excursions  to  the  Grand,  Green,  and  Yampa  Rivers, 
while  thereabouts  he  made  his  first  studies  of  Indian  tribes  and 
became  an  ethnologist.  There  is  no  indication  that  he  had  had 
earlier  training  in  ethnology,  and  it  may  well  be  believed  that  it 
was  as  largely  his  warm  sympathy  as  his  keen  inquiry  that  led 
him  to  eminent  success  in  this  field;  but  the  more  immediate 
result  of  this  summer  and  winter,  regarding  which  no  report 
was  published,  was  his  plan  for  the  exploration  of  the  Green- 
Colorado  River  by  following  its  course  in  boats.  Perhaps  his 
previous  experience  on  the  placid  rivers  of  the  prairies  led  to 
this  adventurous  project  on  a  torrential  river  deeply  inclosed 
in  unknown  canyons. 

EXPLORATION  OF  THE  COLORADO  CANYON.. 

It  was  truly  a  daring  project.  Professor  Brewer,  of  Yale, 
wrote  of  it  some  years  later*  in  effect  as  follows:  Being  in 
Colorado  while  Powell  was  making  his  trip  down  the  river,  I 
was  intensely  anxious  as  to  his  fate,  for  I  thought  his  project 
a  mad  scheme.  .  .  .  The  river  has  an  average  fall  of.  ten 
or  fifteen  feet  per  mile,  and  I  had  assumed  that  there  must  be 
great  falls,  and  that  the  explorer  must  approach  them  from 
above.  On  telling  Powell  of  this  some  years  later,  he  an- 
swered in  substance :  "Have  you  never  seen  the  river  ?  It'  is 
the  muddiest  river  you  ever  saw.  Rapids  I  expected  of  course, 
but  not  falls.  I  was  convinced  that  the  canyon  was  old  enough 
and  the  muddy  water  swift  enough  and  gritty  enough  to  have 
worn  down  all  falls  to  mere  rapids.  I  entered  the  canyon  with 
confidence  that  I  would  have  no  high  falls  to  stop  us,. although 
there  might  be  bad  rapids,  and  I  believed  that  we  might  over- 


*Amer.  Journ.  Science,  XIV,  1902,  p.  381. 

16 


JOHN  WESLEY  POWELL — DAVIS 

come  them  in  some  way — and  we  did."  The  most  significant 
words  in  this  statement  are  "old  enough,"  for  they  show  that 
even  before  Powell  had  explored  the  Colorado  he  had  some- 
how come  to  understand  that  a  large  muddy  river  must  rapidly 
acquire  a  graded  course,  even  though  at  the  bottom  of  a  deep 
canyon  still  inclosed  by  high  walls. 

Powell  returned  from  the  West  by  rail  to  Chicago  in  the 
spring  of  1869  to  get  boats  for  the  expedition.  It  was  organ- 
ized as  a  geographical  and  geological  survey,  supported  by  an 
appropriation  from  Congress  and  placed  under  the  direction 
of  the  Smithsonian  Institution,  of  which  the  then  Secretary, 
Joseph  Henry,  advised  that  the  collection  of  ethnological  data 
should  be  made  a  leading  feature  of  the  journey.  The  party 
consisted  of  ten  men.  They  embarked  May  24,  1869,  in  four 
boats,  where  the  Union  Pacific  Railroad  crosses  the  Green 
River  in  southwestern  Wyoming;  followed  Green  River 
through  deep  gorges  in  the  Uinta  Mountains  to  its  junction  in 
open  country  with  the  Grand  River,  below  which  point  the 
name  Colorado  is  given ;  then  continued  down  the  Colorado 
through  its  profound  canyons  in  the  plateaus  of  southeastern 
Utah  and  northern  Arizona  to  the  open  country  near  the  Ne- 
vada line  on  August  29.  Singularly  enough,  no  sufficient  ac- 
count of  this  adventurous  journey  was  published  until  several 
years  afterward,  although  it  attracted  much  notice  at  the  time. 
A  few  brief  summaries  regarding  the  canyon  and  the  adjacent 
region  are  buried  in  the  congressional  documents  of  the  early 
'705;  but  Powell  did  not  at  first  intend  to  publish  any  full 
report  of  what  he  had  done  and  seen.  His  famous  volume, 
"Exploration  of  the  Colorado  River  of  the  West,"  1875,  one 
of  the  best  narratives  of  adventure  anywhere  to  be  found,  was 
not  written  until  four  or  five  years  after  the  event,  and  then 
only  on  the  insistence  of  Representative  (later  President) 
Garfield,  as  Powell  tells  in  1895  in  the  preface  to  his  popular 
book,  "The  Canyons  of  the  Colorado."  In  addition  to  his  re- 
port of  1875,  several  articles  were  contributed  to  Popular  Sci- 
ence Monthly  and  to  Scribners  Magazine  for  that  year.  The 
country  traversed  was  of  exceptional  interest  and  his  articles 
awakened  widespread  attention.  His  official  report  treated  the 
journey  in  a  singularly  free  and  unconventional  manner;  for 

17 


NATIONAL   ACADEMY   BIOGRAPHICAL    MEMOIRS — VOL.   VIII 

Powell  reproduced  his  original  diary,  keeping  the  narrative  in 
the  present  tense  as  when  written  in  the  canyon,  with  the  result 
of  giving  a  vivacity  to  his  story  unusual  in  government  publi- 
cations; yet  one  may  read  it  without  learning  that  the  author 
had  lost  his  right  forearm ! 

The  climax  of  the  journey  is  reached  when,  after  the  party 
had  made  nearly  all  the  dangerous  distance  in  a  little  less  than 
three  months,  three  of  the  men  insist  that  further  progress  is 
too  perilous,  and  that  the  river  must  be  abandoned :  they  seek 
a  way  out  by  climbing  up  to  the  plateau  surface.  The  others 
persist  in  following  the  river,  and  that  very  afternoon  come 
upon  a  group  of  the  most  dangerous  falls  in  the  whole  journey. 
It  is  interesting  to  note  that  these  falls  do  not  constitute  an  ex- 
ception to  Powell's  expectation  that  the  river  must  have  al- 
ready graded  its  course  in  the  uplifted  rocks  of  the  plateaus, 
for  the  obstruction  which  here  caused  the  falls  was  formed  in 
an  exceptional  manner  by  flows  of  lava  that  had,  in  altogether 
unpredictable  fashion,  cascaded  down  from  the  volcanoes  of 
the  Uinkaret  plateau  on  the  north,  so  recently  that  they  have 
not  yet  been  cleared  away  by  the  river. 

As  these  falls  are  approached  from  upstream,  there  is  no 
possibility  of  seeing  their  face  and  choosing  the  least  danger- 
ous point  for  descent.  The  walls  are  too  steep  for  a  portage 
along  the  bank;  so  one  of  the  men,  Bradley,  approaches  the 
brink  of  the  fall  in  a  boat,  held  by  a  tow-line  from  the  cliffs. 
The  current  soon  becomes  so  strong  that  the  boat  cannot  be 
drawn  back;  Bradley  promptly  cuts  the  line  and  plunges  over 
the  falls,  whirling  in  waves  and  foam,  sinking  out  of  sight, 
rising  again,  safe  on  board  and  waving  his  hat.  Powell  then 
tells  his  own  manner  of  descent  with  two  of  his  men :  "We 
run  to  the  other  boat,  jump  aboard,  push  out,  and  away  we  go 
over  the  falls.  A  wave  rolls  over  us,  and  our  boat  is  unman- 
ageable. Another  great  wave  strikes  us,  the  boat  rolls  over, 
and  tumbles  and  tosses,  I  know  not  how.  All  I  know  is  that 
Bradley  is  picking  us  up.  We  soon  have  all  right  again,  and 
row  to  the  cliff,  and  wait  until  -Sunnier  and  [W.  H.]  Powell 
can  come  [along  the  wall].  After  a  difficult  climb  they  reach 
us.  We  run  two  or  three  miles  farther,  and  turn  again  to  the 
northwest,  continuing  until  night,  when  we  have  run  out  of 
the  granite  once  more."  An  early  start  is  made  the  next  morn- 

18 


JOHN   WESLEY   POWELL — DAVIS 

ing.  "The  river  still  continues  swift,  but  we  have  no  serious 
difficulty,  and  at  twelve  o'clock  emerge  from  the  Grand  Canon 
of  the  Colorado."  Thus  simply  is  it  told  that  on  August  29, 
three  months  after  the  start  from  Green  River,  the  party 
victoriously  passes  out  of  the  deep  canyon  into  the  open  coun- 
try of  the  Great  Basin.  Some  of  the  men  go  on  down  the 
river ;  Powell  went  northward  through  Mormon  settlements  to 
Salt  Lake  City,  and  thence  home.  He  had  been  preceded  by 
reports  of  disaster,  and  had  the  pleasure  of  reading  a  number 
of  obituary  notices  of  his  life. 

The  good  fortune  of  this  daring  journey  was  deservedly  of 
great  service  to  its  chief.  It  developed  his  capacity  for  leader- 
ship in  the  field.  It  received  much  attention  in  the  newspapers 
of  the  time,  and  thus  gave  its  head  a  national  reputation  as  a 
bold,  adventurous,  successful  explorer;  best  of  all,  it  secured 
the  full  confidence  of  men  at  Washington  who  could  aid  his 
further  work,  i  When  in  later  years  of  exploration  the  men  of 
his  party  gatffered  around  the  camp-fire,  and  the  Major  talked 
to  them  of  his  passage  through  the  great  canyon,  "his  influence 
over  all  his  hearers  was  so  profound  that  in  the  days  that  fol- 
lowed a  word  from  him  was  sufficient  to  cause  the  men  to  go 
anywhere  or  to  do  anything,  no  matter  what  the  personal  dan- 
ger might  be ;"  and  this  is  no  wonder,  for  he  was  loyally  de- 
voted to  his  men.  Of  his  companions  through  the  canyon  he 
wrote  years  afterward:  "I  was  a  maimed  man;  my  right  arm 
was  gone,  and  these  brave  men,  these  good  men,  never  for- 
got it." 

GEOLOGICAL  SURVEY  OF  THE  TERRITORIES. 

Powell  returned  to  Utah  and  Arizona  in  1870  and  explored 
the  plateaus  north  of  the  canyon.  A  good  account  of  this  trip 
is  given  in  Chapter  IX  of  the  "Report  on  the  Colorado  River 
of  the  West."  In  1871  he  again  made  a  boat  trip  on  "the 
river."  In  1874  and  1875  he  worked  chiefly  in  eastern  Utah. 
Of  these  three  campaigns  there  is  unfortunately  no  narrative 
by  Powell  ;*  but  many  of  the  results  are  summarized  in  a  re- 


*  F.  S.  Dellenbaugh,  the  youngest  member  of  the  latest  canyon  jour- 
ney, brought  out  a  belated  narrative,  "The  Romance  of  the  Colorado 
.  .  .  River,"  in  1903;  he  also  compiled  an  account  of  the  (earlier 
journey,  "A  Canyon  Voyage,"  published  in  1908. 


NATIONAL   ACADEMY   BIOGRAPHICAL    MEMOIRS — VOL.    VIII 

markable  "Report  on  the  geology  of  the  eastern  part  of  the 
Uinta  Mountains"  (1876),  published  as  the  work  of  the  second 
division  of  the  "U.  S.  Geological  and  Geographical  Survey  of 
the  Territories,"  of  which  he  was  then  "geologist  in  charge." 
His  later  western  journeys,  as  well  as  those  of  the  summers  of 
1872  and  1873,  were  chiefly  occupied  with  ethnological  studies, 
of  which  brief  accounts  are  given  in  Congressional  and  Smith- 
sonian reports.  Powell  prepared  no  other  important  geologi- 
cal volumes;  the  great  impression  that  he  made  on  American 
geology  must  be  credited — apart  from  his  later  work  as  an 
administrator — to  the  two  reports  on  the  Colorado  River  and 
the  Uinta  Mountains.  The  popular  book  on  the  "Canyons  of 
the  Colorado"  (Meadville,  Pa.,  1895)  was  prepared  more  than 
twenty  years  after  the  event,  and  looks  more  like  a  publisher's 
than  an  author's  venture.  Several  chapters  on  the  native 
tribes  were  here  included ;  but  the  whole  appears  to  have  been 
hastily  put  together,  with  too  many  pictures  little  related  to  the 
text. 

REPORT  ON   THE   COLORADO   CANYON. 

Of  the  two  reports  the  earlier  one  on  the  Colorado  is  the 
more  important;  it  is  certainly  one  of  the  most  famous  books 
of  exploration  published  in  this  country.  It  is  unusually  well 
illustrated,  partly  with  wood  cuts  from  photographs,  partly 
with  schematic  drawings  by  Holmes,  in  some  of  which  a  fore- 
ground section  showing  geological  structure  and  a  perspective 
view  showing  surface  form  were  admirably  combined  in  the 
style  of  block  diagrams.  Powell  himself  seems  to  have  had  no 
graphic  skill,  and  perhaps  for  that  reason  permitted  the  publi- 
cation of  certain  exaggerated  pictures,  such  as  that  of  Horse- 
shoe Canyon  (opposite  p.  162),  drawn  by  Moran  in  a  mislead- 
ingly  realistic  fashion ;  and  of  a  seriously  incorrect  picture 
(opposite  p.  212),  probably  drawn  from  verbal  description,  of 
the  double  unconformity  at  the  bottom  of  the  Grand  Canyon, 
the  interpretation  of  which  has  puzzled  more  than  one  reader, 
all  the  more  because  the  excellence  of  the  other  illustrations 
gave  reason  for  thinking  that  this  one  also  must  be  trust- 
worthy. The  double  unconformity  is,  however,  correctly  drawn 
in  a  geological  section  of  the  Uinta  Mountains  report  (p.  43). 

20 


JOHN  WIvSLEY  POWELL — DAVIS 

Along  with  the  other  exploring  geologists  of  that  time, 
Powell  enjoyed  the  inspiring  opportunity  of  working  in  a  new 
and  extraordinary  field,  where  the  problems  were  impressive 
in  magnitude,  yet  relatively  elementary  in  structure,  and  all 
plainly  disclosed  under  the  denuding  influence  of  a  dry  climate. 
Facts  which  Nature  elsewhere  held  as  her  secrets  were  there 
openly  proclaimed  in  imposing  grandeur.  Great  series  of  de- 
posits followed  in  orderly  attitude  and  almost  unbroken  se- 
quence ;  deposition  and  denudation  were  measured  in  tens  of 
thousands  of  feet;  unconformities  were  superbly  exhibited. 
Deformation  had  not  gone  so  far  as  to  produce  almost  unsol- 
vable  complications,  but  had  sufficed  to  cause  great  faults  and 
flexures  of  simple  pattern,  and  also  to  displace  huge  crustal 
blocks,  with  only  marginal  disturbance,  so  that  the  structures 
of  this  kind  in  the  Plateau  province,  first  clearly  set  forth  by 
Powell,  became  types  for  the  world.  The  work  demanded  in 
detecting  the  geological  history  of  the  region  was  utterly  unlike 
the  detailed  and  technical  investigation  given  year  after  year 
by  European  observers  to  the  overthrusts  of  the  highlands  and 
the  closed  folds  of  the  uplands  of  Scotland  or  to  the  overturns 
of  the  Alps.  Minute  studies  were  not  called  for  in  the  Plateau 
country;  conclusions  were  reached  rapidly  and  large  concepts 
were  strongly  impressed  on  the  observer.  It  was  therefore  but 
natural  that  Powell's  pathfinding  geological  work  should  be 
treated  in  a  style  and  on  a  scale  prompted  by  the  simplicity  and 
the  magnitude  of  the  great  structural  units  with  which  he  had 
to  deal. 

Powell  used  fossils  only  as  guides  to  the  dates  of  stratified 
formations,  not  as  a  means  of  making  out  past  forms  of  life. 
His  volcanic  studies  were  free  from  complicated  nomenclature, 
guiltless  of  petrographical  technique,  and  without  bearing  on 
the  classification  of  igneous  rocks — a  subject  that  was  then 
taking  modern  shape.  He  briefly  saw  and  named  the  Henry 
Mountains  during  his  canyon  trip  in  1869,  and  described  them 
as  "composed  of  eruptive  rocks  in  part"  which  had  been 
"poured  out  through  some  fissures  here,  and  spread  over  the 
country  before  it  had  been  eroded  to  its  present  depth"  (Colo- 
rado River,  177)  ;  but  his  curiosity  must  have  been  aroused  as 
to  what  he  did  not  see,  for  a  few  years  later  he  had  a  special 

21 


NATIONAL  ACADEMY   BIOGRAPHICAL    MEMOIRS — VOL.   VIII 

study  made  there  by  Gilbert,  whose  famous  report  on  the 
Henry  Mountains  was  thus  brought  forth.  Powell's  inatten- 
tion to  the  complex  structures  of  crystalline  rocks  was  shown 
by  his  usually  giving  the  schists  of  the  fundamental  complex 
at  the  bottom  of  the  Colorado  Canyon  the  popular  name  of 
"granite."  He  attended  relatively  little  to  the  conditions  under 
which  ancient  stratified  deposits  were  accumulated,  and  prob- 
ably on  this  account  did  not  free  himself  from  prepossessions 
regarding  the  lacustrine  origin  of  the  freshwater  Tertiaries, 
and  did  not  offer  any  explanation  of  the  extraordinary  cross- 
bedding  of  the  White  Cliffs  sandstone;  but  regarding  larger 
structures,  he  developed  broad  and  bold  generalizations  that 
followed  immediately  from  field  observation  and  geological 
common  sense,  illumined  by  a  free  and  lively  imagination.  He 
evidently  enjoyed  the  systematization  of  his  results,  and  repeat- 
edly reduced  them  to  compact  schematic  form,  from  which 
irrelevant  details  and  unknown  local  names  were  withheld, 
greatly  to  the  advantage  of  his  readers.  His  arguments  were 
usually  stated  in  a  simple  manner,  free  from  technicalities,  and 
his  results  were  phrased  in  form  for  popular  understanding. 
He  was  fully  persuaded  that  his  opinions  were  correct,  and  not 
infrequently  stated  them  in  the  positive  form  of  "inevitable 
conclusions,"  as  most  of  them  still  seem  to  be.  They  carried 
conviction  and  are  now  accepted  on  nearly  all  points. 

Powell's  unconscious  style  was  simple  and  direct,  as  in  the 
extract  given  above  describing  the  end  of  his  passage  through 
the  Colorado  Canyon,  or  again  in  the  famous  paragraphs  cited 
below  regarding  the  origin  of  the  Green  River  canyon  through 
the  Uinta  Mountains.  On  account  of  the  loss  of  his  right  arm 
he  had  to  employ  an  amanuensis,  and  therefore  acquired  the 
time-saving  capacity  of  dictating.  His  reports  are  astonish- 
ingly free  from  the  prolixity  that  too  often  accompanies  this 
method  of  composition;  but  they  occasionally  bear  marks  of 
insufficient  revision  in  the  retention  of  impromptu  inventions 
like  "outthinnings"  and  in  the  use  of  certain  words  that  might 
to  advantage  be  replaced  by  others.  It  was  perhaps  not  un- 
natural that  his  phraseology  sometimes  became  exalted,  as  in 
the  peroration  of  the  Colorado  River  volume,  where,  as  if  re- 
calling the  excitement  of  the  canyon  journey,  he  wrote  like  an 

22 


JOHN  WESLEY  POWEU^ — DAVIS 

exuberant  impressionist:  "Then  again  the  restless  sea  retired, 
and  the  golden,  purple  and  black  hosts  of  heaven  made  missiles 
of  their  own  misty  bodies — balls  of  hail,  flakes  of  snow,  and 
drops  of  rain — and  when  the  storm  of  war  came  the  new  rocks 
fled  to  the  sea"  (p.  214). 

One  of  the  most  marked  characteristics  of  Powell's  reports 
is  their  freedom  from  citations  of  other  authors.  This  was 
natural  enough  as  far  as  the  description  of  local  features  are 
concerned,  for  in  the  regions  that  he  explored  he  had  few  geo- 
logical predecessors,  and  to  those  he  gives  full  credit.  His 
citations  from  the  reports  of  the  lamented  Marvine  are  most 
generous ;  but  in  the  statement  of  general  schemes  of  mountain 
and  volcanic  structures  and  of  stream  and  valley  classification 
the  case  is  different.  These  subjects  had  been  studied  in  Eu- 
rope also,  and  the  failure  to  give  due  credit  to  the  work  of 
foreign  geologists  in  our  Survey  reports  brought  upon  us  a 
certain  measure  of  discredit  abroad.  The  reason  for  inatten^\ 
tion  to  European  studies  evidently  was  that  our  geological 
frontiersmen  found  enough  in  the  West  to  make  up  the  whole 
of  their  science;  and  besides  they  did  not  read  French  and 
German,  and  they  were  so  overwhelmed  with  work  that  they 
had  no  time  to  spend  in  looking  up  prior  statements  of  their 
newly-perceived  principles;  so  they  overlooked  foreign  work 
in  a  continent-wide  spirit  of  North  American  provincialism.! 

ANTECEDENT   RIVERS. 

A  significant  instance  of  this  kind  is  found  in  Powell's  fa- 
mous discussion  of  the  course  of  the  Green  River  through  the 
Uinta  Mountains.  He  wrote:  "The  river  had  the  right  of 
way.  In  other  words,  it  was  running  ere  the  mountains  were 
formed;  not  before  the  rocks,  of  which  the  mountains  are 
composed,  were  deposited,  but  before  the  formations  were 
folded,  so  as  to  make  a  mountain  range.  .  .  .  The  emer- 
gence of  the  fold  above  the  general  surface  of  the  country  was 
little  or  no  faster  than  the  general  progress  of  the  corrasion  of 
the  channel.  .  .  .  The  river  was  the  saw  which  cut  the 
mountains  in  two.  .  .  .  The  summit  of  the  fold  slowly 
emerged,  until  the  lower  beds  of  sandstone  were  lifted  to  the 
altitude  at  first  occupied  by  the  upper  beds,  and  if  these  upper 

23 


NATIONAL   ACADEMY   BIOGRAPHICAL    MEMOIRS — VOL.   VIII 

beds  had  not  been  carried  away  they  would  now  be  found  more 
than  % twenty- four  thousand  feet  above  the  river"  (Colorado 
River,  152,  153).  This  is  an  admirable  statement  of  a  great 
idea.  It  bears  not  only  upon  the  processes  of  river  evolution, 
but  upon  the  fundamental  principles  of  geology.  It  was  a  wel- 
come reinforcement  of  the  arguments  for  unjf nrrnitui  iuiiiLTn, 
which,  though  valiantly  urged  by  Hntton^  Playf ajr,  and  Lyell 
regarding  processes  of  erosion  and  deposition,  were  even  later 
than  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century  not  entirely  success- 
ful in. vanquishing  the  widespread  traditional  belief  in  violent 
processes  of  deformation  and  upheaval.  Powell's  demonstra- 
tion, as  he  thought  it,  that  the  Uinta  Mountains  were  not  lifted 
up  faster  than  the  Green  River  could  cut  its  canyon  down 
through  their  broad  anticline  had  great  influence  in  convincing 
his  contemporaries  that  uplift  as  well  as  erosion  and  deposi- 
tion is  a  slow  process,  and  thus  aided,  the  gentle  doctrine  of 
geological  peace  on  earth  gained  a  vast  backward  extension 
into  periods  of  the  past  that  had  long  been  conceived  as  ages 
of  violence. 

It  was  to  rivers  which,  like  the  Green  in  the  Uintas,  had 
held  their  course  through  an  area  of  adverse  uplift  that  Powell 
gave  the  excellent  name  of  antecedent.  He  appears  to  have 
made  no  search  whatever  to  learn  whether  other  observers  had 
come  upon  the  same  idea ;  not  that  he  was  in  the  least  disposed 
to  claim  priority  by  neglecting  their  labors,  but  that  he  was 
fully  engrossed  in  his  own.  In  a  thorough  review  of  this  prob- 
lem, Penck*  points  out  that  Medlicott  in  India  and  Hayden  in 
the  United  States  had  both  preceded  Powell  in  recognizing  the 
persistence  of  certain  rivers  in  holding  their  courses  through 
slowly  uplifted  mountain  ranges.  Medlicottf  inferred  the  long 
persistence  of  certain  rivers  and  the  slow,  imperceptible  prog- 
ress of  deformation  and  uplift,  because  of  "marked  corre- 
spondence between  the  distribution  of  the  accumulations  of 
conglomerate  [ancient  piedmont  river  deposits]  and  the  posi- 
tion of  actual  river  gorges"  through  the  outer  ranges  of  the 


*  A.   Penck.    Die  Bildung   der  Durchbruchstaler.    Verein  z.  Verbr. 
naturwiss.     Kenntnisse  in  Wien,  1888. 

t  H.  B.  Medlicott.    The  Alps  and  the  Himalayas.    A  geological  com- 
parison.   Quart.  Journ.  Geol.  Soc.,  XXIV,  1868,  pp.  34-52. 

24 


JOHN   WESLEY  POWEUv — DAVIS 

Himalayas.  Some  of  the  upturned  conglomerates  are  "as  thick 
and  at  as  high  angles  as  those  on  the  Righi"  in  the  Alps  (46). 
The  Sutlej  in  particular  is  instanced  as  having  held  its  course 
from  a  time  before  the  outer  or  subhimalayan  ranges  were 
raised.  After  issuing  from  deep  valleys  in  lofty  inner  ranges 
it  passes  through  low  hills  of  soft  rocks,  and  then  trenches  a 
ridge  formed  of  "massive  beds  of  coarse  conglomerate  of 
boulders,  such  as  only  occur  in  the  main  river  channels.  These 
beds  are  now  raised  to  the  vertical,  and  in  both  directions  along 
the  strike  these  conglomerates  pass  gradually  within  a  few 
miles  into  the  ordinary  sandstones.  The  presumption  from 
such  a  coincidence  seems  irrestible,  that  the  Sutlej  itself  had 
deposited  these  banks  of  boulders  at  the  spot  where  it  still 
flows"  (47). 

Hayden's  statement,  based  on  studies  in  Montana,  is  as  fol- 
lows :  "The  fact  that  the  streams  seem  to  have  cut  their  way"? 
directly  through  mountain  ranges,  instead  of  following  syn- 
clinal depressions,  indicates  that  they  began  the  process  of  ero-  \ 
sion  at  the  time  of  the  commencement  of  the  elevation  of  the  J 
surface.  This  is  shown  all  along  the  valley  of  the  Yellowstone, 
and  more  conspicuously  in  the  valleys  of  the  Madison  and 
Gallatin,  which  have  carved  immense  canyons  or  gorges  di- 
rectly through  two  of  the  loftiest  ranges  of  mountains  in  Mon- 
tana. We  believe  that  the  course  of  these  streams  was  marked 
out  at  or  near  the  close  of  the  Cretaceous  period,  and  as  the 
ranges  of  mountains  were  in  process  of  elevation  to  their  pres- 
ent height  the  erosion  of  the  channels  continued.  The  details 
of  the  observations  which  contribute  to  form  this  opinion 
would  occupy  a  chapter  or  two."  *  Both  of  these  authors, 
however,  treated  the  problem  of  persistent  rivers  in  an  inci- 
dental manner,  subordinating  it  to  other  larger  topics;  neither 
of  them  gave  an  elaborate  or  an  emphatic  a  statement  to  his 
theory,  and  neither  of  them  invented  a  handy  and  suggestive 
generic  name  for  the  kind  of  rivers  that  they  explained.  The 
taking  term,  antecedent,  was  a  forcible  supplement  to  the  ex- 


*  Report  of  F.  V.  Hayden,  Sixth  Ann.  Kept.  U.  S.  Geol.  Survey  of 
the  Territories  for  1872.  Washington,  1873,  p.  85.  The  paragraph 
above  quoted  was  foreshadowed  in  an  earlier  article.  Amer.  Journ. 
Sci.,  XXXIII,  1862,  pp.  68-79. 

25 


NATIONAL   ACADEMY   BIOGRAPHICAL    MEMOIRS — VOL.   VIII 

planation  of  the  profound  idea  involved  in  Powell's  report; 
and  this  may  be  fairly  taken  to  show  that,  notwithstanding  the 
adverse  opinion  often  inappropriately  quoted  to>  the  contrary 
from  the  emotional  pleading  of  a  charming  heroine,  there  is 
really  matter  of  much  import  in  a  name. 

But  Powell's  further  argument  in  support  of  the  antece- 
dence of  Green  River  through  the  Uinta  Mountains  includes, 
curiously  enough,  the  case  of  certain  streams  which  follow  val- 
leys excavated  in  belts  of  weak  strata  along  the  flanks  of  the 
range.  Had  the  range  been  suddenly  uplifted,  these  streams 
should,  according  to  Powell,  follow  the  dip  of  the  strata;  as 
they  follow  the  strike  instead  of  the  dip,  the  uplift  must  have 
been  gradual.  "The  direction  of  the  streams  is  indubitable 
evidence  that  the  elevation  of  the  fold  was  so  slow  as  not  to 
divert  the  streams.  .  .  .  Had  the  fold  been  uplifted  more 
rapidly,  ...  all  the  smaller  streams  and  waterways  should 
<"~7have  been  cataclinal"  (flowing  down  the  dip).  Hence  "the 
drainage  was  established  antecedent  to  the  corrugation  or  dis- 
placement of  the  beds  by  faulting  and  folding"  (Colorado 
1  River,  163).  The  same  argument  is  used  with  respect  to  the 
drainage  lines  of  the  Arizona  plateaus :  "All  the  facts  concern- 
ing the  relation  of  the  waterways  of  this  region  to  the  moun- 
tains, hills,  canons,  and  cliffs  lead  to  the  inevitable  conclusion 
that  the  system  of  drainage  was  determined  antecedent  to  the 
faulting  and  folding  and  erosion  which  are  observed,  and  ante- 
cedent, also,  to  the  formation  of  the  eruptive  beds  and  cones" 
(Ibid.,  198).  Yet  the  longitudinal  valleys,  here  referred  to  as 
so  decisive  in  the  discussion  of  antecedence,  are  apparently  of 
the  kind  that  had  been  explained  ten  years  earlier  (1862)  by 
Jukes,  from  his  studies  of  the  Blackwater  in  southern  Ireland, 
as  having  been  slowly  developed  by  headward  or  retrogressive 
erosion  along  the  strike  of  weak  beds ;  thus  interpreted,  they 
indicate  slow  adjustment  of  streams  to  structures  and  prob- 
ably do  not  bear  on  the  problems  of  antecedence  at  all. 

This  is  not  the  place  for  further  discussion  of  Green  River, 
regarding  which  the  theory  of  superposition  suggested  by  Em- 
mons  merits  consideration  along  with  Powell's  theory  of  ante- 
cedence. It  indeed  seems  possible  that  Green  River,  which 
was  described  as  the  type  of  antecedent  rivers  when  that  term 

26 


JOHN   WESLEY   POWELL — DAVIS 

was  introduced,  may  be  otherwise  explained,  so  that  its  place 
as  type  will  be  taken  by  a  better-proved  example  of  antece- 
dence, such  as  the  Meuse  in  the  Ardennes.  This  fate  of  a  type 
is,  however,  not  so  very  rare.  The  uplands  of  southern  New 
England,  described  some  twenty  years  ago  as  the  type  of  an 
uplifted  and  dissected  lowland  of  erosion,  for  which  the  name 
peneplain  was  then  suggested,  may,  like  Green  River,  have  to 
yield  their  place  to  a  better-proved  example.  The  object  in  here 
pointing  out  the  invalidity  of  Powell's  argument  is  to  show  that 
even  when  a  mind  as  original  and  powerful  as  his  works  in  a 
field  as  inspiring  as  that  of  the  Uinta  Mountains,  trenched  by 
the  canyon  of  the  Green  River,  there  is  danger  in  overlooking, 
as  Powell  too  often  did,  the  work  of  earlier  investigators  on 
similar  problems.  It  would  be  no  more  fitting  to  omit  men- 
tion of  this  characteristic  shortcoming  of  method  from  an  ac- 
count of  Powell's  work  than  to  paint  out  a  wrinkle  in  a  true 
picture  of  his  rugged  and  kindly  face.  But  in  any  case, 
whether  the  Green  River  followed  its  present  course  ante- 
cedent to  the  uplift  of  the  Uintas  or  not,  and  whether  any 
other  geologist  preceded  Powell  in  recognizing  the  occurrence 
elsewhere  of  rivers  of  this  origin,  it  is  distinctly  to  Powell  that 
geology  now  owes  the  general  acceptance  of  the  idea  of  ante- 
cedence in  river  development. 

GEOLOGICAL  WORK. 

Powell's  contribution  to  geology — apart  from  the  action  of 
surface  processes  and  the  explanation  of  surface  forms — re- 
lated chiefly  to  large  structural  problems.  He  published  many 
carefully  studied  columnar  sections,  giving  indication  of  thick- 
ness, composition,  and  unconformities,  and  making  provisional 
assignment  of  geological  datesj  but  on  the  latter  point  he  wisely 
held  that  "it  would  be  manifestly  absurd  to  introduce  into  a 
newly  studied  province  the  nomenclature  which  had  been 
adopted  in  those  provinces  previously  studied"  (Uinta,  38). 
This  principle  guided  him  some  years  later,  when  he  pointed 
out  in  his  first  report  as  Director  of  the  United  States  Geo- 
logical Survey  that  the  introduction  of  local  formation  names 
has  taken  place  "in  opposition  to  received  opinions,  and  in  spite 
of  the  almost  universal  efforts  of  geologists  to  attain  uni- 

27 


NATIONAL   ACADEMY   BIOGRAPHICAL    MEMOIRS — VOL.   VIII 

formity;  it  therefore  represents  the  logical  and  necessary 
growth  of  the  science.  ...  It  seems  especially  unwise  for 
the  exploring  geologist  to  commit  himself  in  early  stages  of 
investigation  to  refined  and  exact  correlations,  and  in  practice 
it  is  found  that  a  great  number  of  local  names  are  used  tenta- 
tively until  further  research  demonstrates  approximate  identity 
or  establishes  diversity." 

fRpwell  was  one  of  the  pioneers  in  the  demonstration  of  the 
almost  undisturbed  continuity  of  deposition  in  the  West  from 
Cambrian  to  Tertiary  time,  sometimes  slightly  interrupted  by 
gentle  unconformities,  but  without  trace  of  the  "revolution" 
that,  from  the  structures  known  in  Europe  and  eastern  North 
America,  had  been  previously  supposed  to  mark  a  world-wide 
break  between  the  depositional  records  of  Paleozoic  and  Meso- 
zoic  times^/  He  was  the  first  to  bring  out  the  great  structural 
features  of  the  Plateau  province,  already  referred  to.  He  re- 
peatedly emphasized  the  action  of  uplifting  rather  than  of 
compressing  forces,  for  he  had  chiefly  to  do  with  broad  struc- 
tures of  nearly  horizontal  strata,  limited  by  faults  or,  as  he  so 
justly  remarks,  their  homologues,  monoclinal  flexures;  and 
the  latter  style  of  deformation  was  in  his  time  a  geological 
novelty.  Complicated  deformation  was  mostly  limited  in  the 
Plateau  region  to  "zones  of  diverse  displacement"  between  ex- 
tended areas  of  little  disturbance;  the  only  sharp  folds  with 
,  which  he  had  to  do  occurred  in  these  narrow  zones.  He  sug- 
gested that  flexing  of  strata  was  probably  a  deep-seated  process, 
while  faulting  was  a  more  superficial  one.  As  in  his  discussion 
of  the  problem  of  antecedence,  stated  above,  so  through  all  his 
writings,  he  strongly  supported  the  then  growing  idea  that 
"upheaval  was  not  marked  by  a  great  convulsion,  for  the  lifting 
of  the  rocks  [in  the  Uintas]  was  so  slow  that  the  rains  removed 
the  sandstones  almost  as  fast  as  they  came  up." 

Following  his  systematic  habit  of  mind,  he  grouped  the 
mountainous  reliefs  of  his  region  into  two  great  classes ;  some 
were  composed  of  sedimentary  strata  and  others  of  extrav- 
asated  materials.  He  then  divided  these  classes  into  a  num- 
ber of  types  according  to  details  of  structure,  and  subdivided 
them  still  further  according  to  the  work  of  erosion  upon  them. 
The  Appalachians  were  the  only  mountains  here  mentioned 


JOHN   WIvSI.KY   POWEXL — DAVIS 

outside  of  his  own  field.  The  names  given  to  his  types  were 
usually  taken  from  local  examples,  although  in  certain  cases 
similar  structures  had  long  been  well  known  in  other  fields. 
His  reason  for  thus  passing  over  the  earlier  work  of  others 
elsewhere  was  evidently  that  he  wished  simply  to  classify  the 
phenomena  that  he  had  himself  observed.  It  was  perhaps  by" 
reason  of  the  habit  of  reducing  his  facts  to  schematic  arrange- 
ment that  he  gave  an  oversimplified  account  of  the  Basin 
ranges,  i  He  did  not  explicitly  announce  that  the  prefaulting 
mass  in  the  Great  Basin  was  of  complicated  structure  and  pos- 
sibly of  irregular  surface ;  he  indeed  tacitly  implied  a  horizon- 
tal structure  and  plain  surface  when  he  wrote:  "When  the 
blocks  into  which  a  district  of  country  has  been  broken  by 
faults  are  greatly  tilted,  so  that  the  strata  dip  at  high  angles, 
the  uplifted  edges  of  such  blocks  often  form  long  mountain 
ridges.  .  .  .  Many  of  the  ridge-like  mountains  of  the  Basin 
province  have  this  structure.  Such  a  ridge  is  composed  of 
monoclinal  strata,  the  one  side  presenting  a  bold  escarped 
front,  the  other  a  more  gently  sloped  back  conforming  to  a 
greater  or  less  degree  with  the  dip"  (Uinta  Mountains,  16). 
It  is  possible  that  the  failure  of  later  observers  to  find  simple 
monoclinal  structures  and  forms  in  the  Basin  ranges  corre- 
sponding to  this  simple  description  is  in  part  responsible  for 
the  misunderstandings  that  have  arisen  regarding  the  origin 
of  the  ranges.  In  another  connection  Powell's  account  of  the 
Basin  ranges  is  more  satisfactory,  as  will  appear  below. 

PHYSIOGRAPHIC    WORK. 

Powell's  contribution  to  the  discussion  of  erosional  processes, 
and  their  effect  in  the  development  of  land  forms  was  of  fully 
as  great  value  as  his  more  strictly  geological  studies,  and  cer- 
tainly exerted  a  marked  influencev£ii  the  work  of  later  stu- 
dents of  physiographic  problems.  I  It  is  not  too  much  to  say 
that  in  this  division  of  his  studies/ne,  with  his  able  collabo- 
rators, laid  the  foundations  of  what  may  be  fairly  called  the 
American  school  of  geomorphology,  now  eagerly  embraced  by 
modern  physiographers  everywhere,  and  that  he  thus  con- 
tributed immensely  to  the  awakening  and  the  advance  of  the 
sluggish  old  science  of  geography.  It  is  worth  pointing  out 

29 


NATIONAL   ACADKMY   BIOGRAPHICAL    MEMOIRS — VOL.    VIII 

that  a  physiographic  turn  was  given  to  Powell's  work,  not  so 
much  from  his  own  intentional  preference  or  selection,  but 
from  the  abundant  and  open  opportunity  for  physiographic 
study  in  a  semi-arid  region,  for,  in  common  with  nearly  all 
the  early  geological  explorers  of  the  West,  Powell  was  led  by 
his  environment  to  give  much  attention  to  surface  forms ;  he 
could  not  fail  to  see  their  intimate  relation  to  internal  struc- 
ture, so  wonderfully  displayed  by  reason  of  the  scantiness  or 
absence  of  vegetation.  He  therefore  inevitably  described  the 
relief  of  his  region  by  explaining  it,  and  his  explanation  was 
presented  in  terms  of  structural  masses,  raised  by  internal 
diastrophic  forces  and  worked  upon  by  external  destructive 
forces.  k  He  emphasized  internal  or  "geological"  structure  as  the 
prime  basis  for  the  classification  of  land  forms,  and  adopted  as 
the  guide  to  their  secondary  grouping  the  erosion  of  what  he 
called  "concomitant,"  or,  as  would  now  be  said,  sequential, 
minor  forms.  \  He  did  not  explicitly  make  the  next  step  cf 
systematically~o!escribing  the  stages  in  the  progress  of  erosion 
during  its  work  upon  uplifted  masses,  but  it  must  be  a  careless 
reader  who  does  not  repeatedly  find  this  principle  implied  in  a 
careful  study  of  Powell's  writings.  At  this  time,  as  well  as 
later,  Powell  had  the  great  advantage  of  discussing  his  prob- 
lems with  a  younger  investigator  of  the  Cordilleran  region, 
whose  sound  views  probably  had  a  larger  influence  in  shaping 
his  senior's  opinions  than  will  ever  be  directly  known. 

As  to  the  action  of  erosional  processes,  Powell's  reports 
abound  in  quotable  statements,  of  which  the  following  are 
good  examples :  "Erosion  is  not  greatly  promoted  by  increased 
rainfall.  .  .  .  With  greater  rainfall  we  have  greater 
power,  but  a  lesser  utilization  of  the  power;  with  lesser  rain- 
fall we  have  lesser  power,  but  greater  utilization ;  and  in  these 
varying  conditions,  just  where  maximum  degradation  is  found 
I  am  not  able  to  state."  "I  have  many  times  witnessed  the 
action  of  a  storm  in  an  arid  region  where  the  disintegrated 
rocks  were  unprotected  by  forests,  shrubbery,  or  turf,  and  as 
often  have  T  been  impressed  with  the  wonderful  power  of  the 
infrequent  storm  to  gather  up  and  carry  away  the  land,  as 
compared  with  the  frequent  storm  in  the  prairie  or  forest  of  a 
land  more  richly  clad"  (Uinta,  188;  see  also  Colorado  River, 

30 


JOHN   WESI.KY   1'OWKU. — DAVIS 

Attention  to  stream  action  naturally  led  to  an  attempt  to 
classify  streams  and  valleys.  Two  classifications  were  pro- 
posed; the  first  was  based  on  the  relation  of  streams  to  the 
strata  that  they  traversed ;  several  types  were  admirably  illus- 
trated in  ideal  figures  drawn  by  Holmes,  and  each  type  was 
given  a  name  of  Greek  origin,  as  cataclinal,  diaclinal,  and  so 
on;  but  these  names  have  not  come  into  general  use,  perhaps 
because  they  express  only  an  empirical  relation.  The  second 
classification  of  streams  and  valleys  was  in  terms  of  their 
origin ;  the  three  kinds  here  recognized  were  given  names  of 
Latin  derivation — antecedent,  consequent,  and  superimposed — 
last  two  kinds  having  been  recognized  but  not  named  by  Mar- 
vine,  from  whom  Powell  quotes;  and  these  names  have  come 
into  general  use  among  modern  physiographers.  River  be- 
havior •  was  discussed  with  much  originality,  and  reasonable 
meaning  was  given  to  features  that  had  previously  been  stated 
empirically;  for  example:  "In  the  Colorado  river,  with  very 
few  exceptions,  all  the  falls  and  rapids  which  beset  its  course 
through  the  great  canons  are  caused  by  dams  of  boulders 
made  by  side  streams  having  great  declivity"  (Uinta,  193). 
Regarding  Platte  River,  on  the  plains,  it  is  luminously  stated: 
"The  beds  through  which  the  river  runs  are  incoherent,  and 
although  the  river  has  as  great  a  fall  as  the  Colorado  through 
the  plateaus,  and  although  the  climatic  conditions  are  essen- 
tially the  same,  yet  the  former  runs  in  a  broad  sheet  scarcely 
below  the  level  of  the  plain,  while  the  latter  runs  in  a  narrow 
groove  at  profound  depths  below  the  general  surface"  (Uinta, 
194).  The  nature  and  amount  of  river  load  and  the  manner 
of  its  transportation  are  carefully  considered.  The  load  "does 
not  float  on  the  water,  but  behaves  as  an  integral  part  of  it, 
and  with  ft  obeys  the  laws  of  hydrodynamics"  (Uinta,  184). 
The  principles  here  announced  were  afterwards  developed  with 
greater  fullness  in  an  address  before  the  National  Academy 
of  Sciences,  under  the  title  of  '"The  laws  of  hydraulic  degra- 
dation," with  the  object  of  mentioning  "the  principal  efficient 
methods  of  controlling  rivers  in  their  floodplain  reaches;" 
and  here  Powell's  indifference  to  precedent  is  shown  again, 
for  although  the  problem  and  the  technique  of  river  control 
have  been  abundantly  discussed  and  successfully  practiced  in 


NATIONAL   ACADEMY   BIOGRAPHICAL    MEMOIRS — VOL.   VIII 

Europe,  Powell's  published  paper  (Science,  XII,  1888,  pp. 
229-233)  does  not  contain  a  single  citation.  As  a  correlative 
of  the  transportation  of  load  by  stream,  its  deposition  was 
also  considered,  and  a  good  beginning  made  toward  recog- 
nizing the  great  importance  of  fluviatile  deposits  in  the  case 
of  an  extensive  conglomerate  (Uinta,  170).  In  connection 
with  the  transportation  of  large  boulders  from  mountains  uy 
storm  floods,  a  curious  suggestion  is  made  (Colorado  River, 
208)  regarding  a  possible  similar  interpretation  of  parts  of 
the  "Drift"  in  the  upper  Mississippi  Valley,  which  Powell  had 
studied  while  he  was  a  professor  in  Illinois. 

BASEXEVIX    OF    EROSION. 

Among  all  Powell's  many  generalizations  none  has  been 
more  broadly  applied  than  his  conception  of  the  base  level 
(now  better  printed  as  a  single  word,  baselevel)  of  erosion. 
He  wrote :  "We  may  consider  the  level  of  the  sea  to  be  a  grand 
base  level,  below  which  the  dry  lands  cannot  be  eroded ;  but  we 
may  also  have,  for  local  or  temporary  purposes,  other/  base 
levels  of  erosion,  which  are  the  levels  of  the  beds  of  the  prin- 
cipal streams  which  carry  away  the  products  of  erosion.  .  .  . 
What  I  have  called  the  base  level  would,  in  fact,  be  an  imag- 
inary surface,  inclining  slightly  in  all  its  parts  toward  the 
lower  end  of  the  principal  stream  draining  the  area  through 
which  the  level  is  supposed  to  extend,  or  having  the  inclination 
of. its  parts  varied  in  direction  as  determined  by  tributary 
streams."  Where  a  "stream  crosses  a  series  of  rocks  in  its 
course,  some  of  which  are  hard  and  others  soft,  the  harder 
rocks  form  a  series  of  temporary  dams;  .  .  .  and  thus 
we  may  have  a  series  of  base  levels  of  erosion"  (Colorado 
River,  203). 

It  is  to  be  noted  that  baselevel  as  thus  defined  seems  to  have 
two  meanings.  One  meaning  is  very  simple;  ft  is  simply  the 
level  of  the  sea,  extending  in  imagination  under  the  lands. 
The  other  is  much  more  complicated ;  it  is  an  imaginary,  undu- 
lating, and  inclined  surface  passing  through  a  river  and  its 
tributaries,  but  passing  beneath  the  intervening  land  surfaces. 
And  as  thus  defined  baselevel  must  be  conceived  with  diffi- 
culty because  of  the  vagueness  as  to  the  stage  of  river  devel- 

32 


JOHN   WESLEY   POWELL — DAVIS 

opment  when  it  is  first  to  be  applied,  because  of  the  irregu- 
larity of  its  form,  and  because  of  its  slow  changes  as  the  con- 
trolling stream  lines  are  worn  down  to  gentler  slopes.  Nat- 
urally enough,  the  more  complicated  meaning  has  been  little 
used.  The  simpler  meaning  now  prevails,  under  which  base- 
level  may  be  concisely  defined  as  the  "level  base"  with  respect 
to  which  river  erosion  is  performed,  determined  either  by  sea- 
level  in  the  most  general  case  or  by  a  rock-sill  or  lake  surface 
or  basin  floor  in  various  special  cases.  The  idea  thus  presented 
is  discoverable,  provided  the  reader  is  already  acquainted  with 
it,  as  an  implied  factor  of  various  explicit  statements  in  the 
writings  of  certain  earlier  authors ;  but  Powell  makes  it  wholly 
explicit,  and  indeed  sets  it  forth  in  a  very  striking  and  appealing 
manner.  •  Moreover,  he  gave  its  leading  element  a  handy  name, 
as  he  did  in  the  case  of  antecedent  rivers,  with  the  result  of 
rapidly  promoting  a  clear  and  general  understanding  of  a  prin- 
ciple of  prime  importance  in  the  rational  study  of  land  forms. 
Simple  as  the  principle  here  involved  really  is,  the  explicit  an- 
nouncement marks  an  era  in  rational  physiography. 

A  second  step  of  great  importance  followed  from  the  first, 
as  already  intimated.  The  massive  structures  on  which  ero- 
sional  processes  operate  having  been  conceived,  the  erosional 
processes  themselves  having  been  analyzed,  and  the  baselevel 
with  respect  to  which  they  work  having  been  recognized,  the 
successive  steps  in  the  progress  of  their  work  naturally  became 
the  subject  of  study.  Powell  clearly  saw  that  mountain  forms 
are  not  the  result  of  disorderly  and  individual  uplift,  but  of 
erosion.  "The  mountains  were  not  thrust  up  as  peaks,  but  a 
great  block  was  slowly  lifted,  and  from  this  the  mountains  were 
carved  by  the  clouds — patient  artists,  who  take  what  time  may 
be  necessary  for  their  work.  We  speak  of  mountains  forming 
clouds  about  their  tops  ;  the  clouds  have  formed  the  mountains'' 
( Colorado  River,  154).  This  had  been  recognized  by  others.__ 
but  Powell  went  further.  "The  first  work  of  rains  and  rivers 
is  to  cut  channels  and  divide  the  country  into  hills,  and  perhaps 
mountains,  by  many  meandering  grooves  or  watercourses,  and 
when  these  have  reached  their  local  base  levels,  under  the  ex- 
isting conditions,  the  hills  are  washed  down,  but  not  entirely 
carried  away"  (Colorado  River,  204) — that  is,  a  lowland  of 

•  33 


NATIONAL   ACADEMY   BIOGRAPHICAL    MEMOIRS — VOL:  VIII 

small  relief  will  in  time  be  produced  by  the  erosion  of  rain  and 
rivers.  Previous  to  Powell  no  one  had  ventured  in  the  theory 
of  land  carving  by  rain  and  rivers  to  go  beyond  what  would 
Uoday  be  called  a  late-mature  stage  in  the  cycle  of  erosion — 
namely,  the  production  of  valleys  between  hills  or  mountains — 
unless  one  goes  back  to  the  brief  generalization  of  the  German 
philosopher,  Kant,  who  a  century  earlier  had  recognized  that 
the  action  of  rain  and  streams  must  slowly  wear  down  all  high- 
lands and  rob  the  earth's  surface  of  its  inequalities ;  or  to  the 
broad  principle  of  the  Scotch  geologist,  Playfair,  who  a  little 
later  explained  that  the  earth  must  tend  gradually  to  become  a 
spheroid  of  rotation  by  the  external  action  of  erosional  forces, 
whatever  its  original  form  had  been.  But  Powell  is  much 
more  thoroughgoing  and  definite  than  any  of  his  predecessors 
He  states  in  his  second  report,  after  recognizing  the  rapid 
wearing  down  of  highlands:  "The  degradation  of  the  last  few 
inches  of  a  broad  area  of  land  above  the  level  of  the  sea  would 
require  a  longer  time  than  all  the  thousands  of  feet  which 
might  have  been  above  it,  so  far  as  this  degradation  depends 
on  mechanical  processes  ;  .  but  here  the  disintegration 

by  solution  and  the  transportation  of  the  material  by  the 
agency  of  fluidity  come  in  to  assist  the  slow  processes  of  me- 
chanical degradation,  and  finally  perform  the  chief  part  of  the 
task"_J\Uinta,  196).  This  passage  is  of  special  interest  as 
being  the  most  explicit  statement  made  by  Powell  regarding 
the  general  possibility  that  normal  erosional  processes,  working 
on  a  land-mass  long  undisturbed,  will  ultimately  reduce  the 
whole  surface  to  a  lowland  but  little  above  sealevel.  His  full 
understanding  of  the  problem  is  shown  when  he  thus  points 
out  the  contrast  between  what  would  now  be  called  the  rapid 
changes  of  the  youthful  stage  early  in  a  cycle  of  erosion  and 
the  extreme  deliberation  of  advanced  old  age  at  the  end  of  the 
cycle. 

PLANATION. 

These  general  results  were  not  left  without  practical  appli- 
cation. The  great  plains  of  erosion  revealed  by  the  superb 
unconformities  in  the  bottom  of  the  Grand  Canyon  of  the 
Colorado  in  northern  Arizona  were  evidently  regarded  as  the 

34 


JOHN   WEST, ICY    J'OWEW, — DAVIS 

result  of  persistent  erosion  by  rain  and  rivers  during  prolonged 
still-stands  of  the  region  in  ancient  geological  periods ;  but  the 
phraseology  adopted  for  the  peroration,  in  which  the  history 
of  these  buried  lands  is  set  forth,  must  leave  the  uninformed 
reader  in  some  doubt  as  to  the  precise  nature  of  the  facts  and 
inferences  there  presented.  A  simpler  statement  is  given  for 
the  plateau-like  highlands  of  crystalline  schists,  flanked  by 
upturned  sedimentaries  in  the  Colorado  Front  Range,  which 
had  made  a  "deep  impression"  on  Powell  when  he  crossed 
them  in  his  first  Western  journey  in  1867.  He  afterward  re- 
calls that  he  had  then  "dimly  conjectured  that  tens  of  thou- 
sands of  feet  had  been  eroded  from  some  of  the  ranges,  and 
that  the  table  or  plateau  like  character  of  the  ranges  was  due 
to  some  epoch  of  this  later  denudation  of  the  ranges  when  they 
were  planed  down  to  a  common  level.  .  .  .  Such  a  planing 
down  occurs  when  the  channels  of  the  eroding  streams  remain 
for  a  great  length  of  time  at  a  general  base  level"  (Uinta,  27). 
It  would  thus  appear  that  the  first  observer  to  recognize  this 
fundamental  process  in  the  origin  of  the  Front  Range  of  the 
Rocky  Mountains  was  not  Marvine,  to  whom  it  has  elsewhere 
been  credited,  but  Powell.  True,  he  does  not  explicitly  state 
that  the  planed-down  surface  of  the  Front  Range  was  after- 
ward broadly  uplifted  to  its  present  highland  altitude  in  order 
to  excite  its  streams  to  erode  the  gorges  by  which  it  is  now  dis- 
sected ;  but  no  one  who  reads  his  reports  can  doubt  that  he 
understood  the  uplift  as  clearly  as  the  planing  down.  Fol- 
lowing the  principles  so  well  and  so  early  applied  in  Colorado, 
he  afterward  perceived  that  the  ranges  of  the  Great  Basin, 
though  composed  of  Eozoic  and  Paleozoic  rocks,  are  moun- 
tains of  very  late  upheaval,  and  that  before  upheaval  their 
region  was  "a  comparatively  low  plain,  constituting  a  general 
base  level  of  erosion  to  which  that  region  had  been  denuded  in 
Mezosoic  and  early  Tertiary  time  when  it  was  an  area  of  dry 
land"  (Uinta,  32).  He  was  thus  led  to  say:  "Mountains  can- 
not long  remain  as  mountains ;  they  are  ephemeral  topographic 
forms.  Geologically  all  existing  mountains  are  recent ;  the 
ancient  mountains  are  gone"  (Uinta,  196).  I  can  well  recall 
the  exclamatory  vigor  that  Powell  gave  to  a  statement  at  a 
scientific  meeting  in  1884,  and  the  emphasis  that  he  added  with 

35 


NATIONAL    ACADEMY    IHOC.RAPTIICAI,    MEMOIRS VOL.    VIII 

rapid  gestures  of  his  empty  sleeve:  "If  the  Adirondacks  had 
been  uplifted  in  Cambrian  time" — as  was  then  generally  sup- 
posed— "they  would  have  been  worn  down  over  and  over 
AGAIN  !" 

The  discussion  of  cliffs  of  displacement  and  cliffs  of  erosion 
in  the  Colorado  River  report  is  an  excellent  example  of  Pow- 
ell's deductive  presentation,  evidently  based  upon  observed  ex- 
amples, but  systematically  extended  beyond  their  reach  and 
admirably  illustrated  by  a  series  of  block  diagrams  by  Holmes. 
The  ideal  types  thus  presented  are  shown  in  far  greater  dis- 
tinctness than  could  be  reached  in  any  direct  view  of  actual 
examples.  It  is  well  said  that  "the  cliffs  of  erosion  are  very 
irregular  in  direction,  but  somewhat  constant  in  vertical  out- 
line; and  the  cliffs  of  displacement  are  somewhat  regular  in 
direction,  but  very  inconstant  in  vertical  outline"  (Colorado 
River,  191).  This  sentence  may  indeed  be  taken  as  one  of  the 
best  examples  of  Powell's  power  in  condensed  verbal  exposi- 
tion. The  migration  of  divides  and  the  associated  beheading 
of  consequent  streams  during  the  retreat  of  cliffs  of  erosion  is 
recognized  (Ibid.,  210),  but  the  principle  here  involved  was 
not  developed  to  its  more  general  application. 


r 


PHYSIOGRAPHIC    ESSAYS. 


It  is  in  the  pages  on  the  land  forms  of  the  Plateau  province 
that  one  finds  some  of  Powell's  best  physiographic  presenta- 
tion, much  better  than  in  two  later  essays  on  "Physiographic 
Processes"  and  "Physiographic  Features,"  which  he  contributed 
to  the  series  of  "National  Geographic  Monographs"  in  1895. 
These  monographs  were  intended  for  school  teachers  of  physi- 
cal geography,  who  were  then,  as  they  are  still,  in  too  large  a 
proportion  very  imperfectly  trained  in  their  science,  and  who 
therefore  needed,  as  they  still  need,  only  elementary  essays 
presenting  specific  examples  in  simple  language.  Whatever 
Powell's  earlier  experience  in  teaching  school  may  have  con- 
tributed to  his  style  of  presentation,  his  later  experience  as 
leader  of  exploring  expeditions  and  as  organizer  and  director 
of  large  scientific  bureaus  did  not  adapt  it  to  the  needs  of  the 
readers  here  appealed  to.  The  simple  style  in  which  cliffs  and 
canyons  are  described  in  the  Colorado  River  report  is  re- 

36 


JOHN   WKSLEY  POWELL — DAVIS 

placed  in  these  two  essays  by  an  elaborate,  sometimes  an  ex- 
travagant, manner  of  statement  little  suited  to  school  teachers. 
They  are  literal  readers,  and  must  have  been  mystified  by  sucIT~ 
sentences  as :  "The  purple  cloud  is  painted  with  dust,  and  the 
sapphire  sky  is  adamant  on  wings;"  or,  "With  the  revolving 
moon  the  tides  sweep  back  and  forth  across  the  surface  of  the 
sea,  and  alternately  lash  the  shores  with  their  crested  waves ;" 
and  it  was  certainly  disappointing  to  those  who  had  labored 
to  introduce  the  principles  of  uniformitarian  geology  into 
geography  to  find  the  authority  of  Powell  back  of  a  statement 
telling  "how  fire,  earthquake,  and  flood  have  been  involved  in 
fashioning  the  land  and  sea."  The  small  attention  given  to 
marine  processes  in  Powell's  official  reports,  written  in  the  en- 
vironment of  a  broad  continental  interior,  was  natural  enough ; 
but  the  scanty  systematic  treatment  that  these  processes  re- 
ceived in  comparison  with  the  attention  given  to  rain  and 
rivers  in  the  essay  on  "Physiographic  Processes"  was  as  little 
appropriate  as  the  insufficient  discussion  of  river  work  and  the 
exaggerated  consideration  of  marine  processes  by  certain  ear- 
lier transatlantic  writers  of  a  more  insular  environment. 

The  third  essay  of  this  series,  on  the  "Physiographic  Re- 
gions of  the  United  States,"  is  better  than  the  other  two.  The 
subdivisions  of  our  country  into  provinces,  as  there  presented, 
has  been  often  used  by  later  writers,  and  must  in  its  larger 
features  be  permanently  adopted,  because  it  is  based  on  under- 
ground structure  as  the  prime  element  in  physiographic  classi- 
fication, rather  than  on  an  empirical  examination  of  surface 
features,  independent  of  their  origin,  such  as  had  been  ac- 
cepted in  earlier  years  when  geographers  and  geologists  hardly 
had  a  speaking  acquaintance  with  one  another.  \  The  correla- 
tion of  structure  and  form  in  the  Plateau  region  had  been 
admirably  set  forth  in  the  Uinta  report  by  means  of  a  block 
diagram  (facing  p.  14),  which  marked  an  immense  advance 
over  the  black-bodied  profiles  then  in  common  use,  and  even 
today  unhappily  not  extinct.  The  same  report  had  clearly 
separated  the  Basin  Ranges,  the  Plateaus,  and  the  Rocky  Moun- 
tains :  "first,  desert  valleys  between  naked  ridges ;  second,  high 
plateaus  severed  by  profound  gorges,  and,  third,  massive  high 
mountains  with  shining  snow-fields"  (Uinta,  8).  This  is  sup- 

37 


NATIONAL,  ACADEMY  BIOGRAPHICAL   MEMOIRS — VOL.   VIII 

plemented  in  the  "Physiographic  Regions"  by  the  statement 
that  the  Rocky  Mountains  terminate  in  northern  New  Mexico, 
where  the  Basin  Ranges  stretch  far  southeastward  to  meet 
the  southwestern  border  of  the  Great  Plains.  Subordinate 
changes  in  Powell's  boundaries  and  subdivisions  may  of 
course  be  made,  as  in  the  interpolation  of  the  group  of  domed 
mountains  in  western  North  Carolina  between  the  Piedmont 
plateau  and  the  Appalachian  ridges,  or  in  the  separation  of  the 
highlands  of  northern  Minnesota  and  upper  Michigan  from 
the  Lake  plains  farther  southeast ;  but  in  the  main  the  demar- 
cation of  the  provinces  here  indicated  in  text  and  map  consti- 
tutes a  permanent  advance  in  American  physiography^  How 
singular  that  a  practiced  observer,  keen  enough  to  see  that  the 
Rocky  Mountains  end  southward  in  New  Mexico,  should  not 
have,  as  a  writer  for  teachers,  moderated -the  hyperbolic  pero- 
ration which  in  the  last  lines  of  this  essay  described  the  Cali- 
fornia coast  ranges  as  a  province  /^ where  the  balm  of  the 
tropics  bathes  the  winter  with  verdure,  and  boreal  zones  boon 
the  summer  with  zephyrs  K^ 

It  was  in  connection  with  the  explanatory  or  rational  de- 
scription of  land  forms  in  terms  of  their  past  history  as  de- 
pendent on  underground  rock-structure  and  external  erosive 
processes,  that  Powell  ingeniously  applied  his  analytical 
method  in  a  reversed  direction,  as  if  confident  that  a  good 
rule  must  work  both  ways,  for  he  frequently  inferred  the  past 
history  of  a  district  from  its  present  form.  The  reading 
of  past  history  from  depositional  records  had  long  been  a 
standard  method  in  geology;  reading  past  history  from  ero- 
sional  records  was  a  novelty.  This  is  well  illustrated  in  his 
conclusion  that  while  each  Basin  Range  "is  but  a  small  resid- 
uary fragment  of  the  great  inclined  block"  from  which  it  has 
been  carved,  yet  when  compared  to  the  Kaibab  or  the  Uinta 
"the  erosion  of  the  Basin  Range  ridges  sinks  into  insignifi- 
cance;" hence  "we  are  forced  to  conclusion  that  the  condi- 
tions for  great  erosion  now  found  in  the  Basin  Ranges  have 
existed  but  for  a  short  period"  (Uinta,  33,  34).  This  prin- 
ciple has  had  wide  application  in  later  years. 


JOHN   WESLEY   POWEUv — DAVIS     XT) 
,    LANDS  OF  THE  ARID  REGION. 

Powell's  large  share  in  promoting  a  correct  knowledge  of 
the  arid  parts  of  the  United  States  and  their  possible  utiliza- 
tion will  not  be  realized  by  readers  today  unless  they  recall  the 
time  when  so  much  was  said  about  taking  the  words  "Great 
American  Desert"  off  of  the  map.  This  name  was,  during  a 
period  of  early  exploration,  recklessly  extended  over  vast 
areas  of  the  West  which  are  by  no  means  completely  desert; 
but  as  the  frontier  was  pushed  westward  half  a  century  ago, 
the  restriction  of  the  name  was  hardly  less  reckless  than  its 
extension.  The  existence  of  a  desert  was  actually  denied, 
although  there  certainly  is  a  large  space  in  the  West  and 
Southwest  truly  not  altogether  devoid  of  vegetation,  but  per- 
manently "desert"  in  the  economic  sense,  whatever  its  name. 
It  was,  of  course,  open  to  occupation  in  a  limited  manner,  as 
nearly  all  deserts  are;  settlers  who  advanced  into  the  dry 
country  soon  recognized  that  certain  small  areas  in  nearly 
every  part  of  it  could  be  redeemed  by  irrigation,  and  that 
much  larger  areas  were  not  so  barren  but  that  wandering  herds 
of  cattle  could  subsist  on  their  scanty  herbage,  provided  that 
water  was  not  too  distant.  Thus  the  region  began  to  have  a 
better  reputation  than  it  deserved ;  and,  curiously  enough, 
about  coincident  with  a  wave  of  rapid  immigration  into  the 
pasturage  area  of  the  Great  Plains  in  the  '7o's  and  '8o's,  there 
was  a  period  of  increasing  rainfall  in  that  subhumid  region 
which  was  taken  by  many — even  by  army  officers,  who  ought 
to  have  known  better — to  result  from  plowing  the  soil,  laying 
rails,  or  stretching  telegraph  wires,  and  therefore  regarded  as 
a  permanent  improvement  of  climate.  Farming  was  for  a 
time  successful,  and  this  was  enormously  advertised.  Thou- 
sands of  settlers,  accustomed  to  farming  on  the  moist  prairies 
of  the  Mississippi  Valley,  attempted  in  good  faith  to  establish 
themselves  on  the  drier  Plains,  only  to  be  driven  away  with 
bitter  disappointment  and  heavy  loss  when  a  few  years  later 
a  period  of  less  rainfall  caused  the  failure  of  their  crops. 

The  irrigated  areas  naturally  had  better  fortune,  especially 
the  larger  undertaking  of  the  Mormons  in  Utah  and  of  the 
Greeley  district  in  Colorado.  These  advantageously  located 

39 


NATIONAL,   ACADEMY   BIOGRAPHICAL    MEMOIRS — VOL.   VIII 

areas  are  permanent  assets  of  immense  value  to  the  West,  and 
much  profit  now  comes  from  many  similar  but  smaller  areas ; 
but  even  the  greenest  spots  in  the  most  barren  wilderness  were 
always  called  settlements,  and  never  oases.  In  various  parts 
of  the  arid  region  the  latter  name  would  have  been  quite  as 
appropriate  as  it  is  in  the  Sahara,  but  its  connotation  of  a 
surrounding  desert  was  too  manifest  to  make  it  acceptable. 
\ "Powell  told  the  truth  about  the  dry  country,  and  advocated 
a  comprehensive  plan  whereby  its  real  values  might  be  devel- 
oped. It  was  at  his  suggestion  that  Congress  appointed  a 
commission  to  study  the  physical  and  economic  conditions  of 
the  arid  region,  and  he  gave  two  years  to  this  work.  We  have 
no  narrative  of  his  Western  journeys  in  this  connection,  but 
the  results  were  published  in  a  most  important  "Report  on  the 
Lands  of  the  Arid  Regions  of  the  United  States"  in  1879,  to 
which  Gilbert,  Dutton,  and  Thompson  contributed  chapters. 
Few  reports  have  had  a  greater  value  in  "pointing  out  the  direc- 
tion of  safe  and  sound  progress.  The  first  edition  of  1,800 
copies  was  soon  exhausted,  and  a  second  edition  of  5,000  was 
issued.  The  area  treated  was  about  four-tenths  of  that  of  the 
United  States,  and  the  report  was  the  first  comprehensive 
study  of  the  kind  issued  in  this  country;  today  it  is  recognized 
as  a  classic  treatise  on  the  subject. 

Powell  cautiously  set  the  limit  of  successful  agriculture 
without  irrigation — the  singular  art  of  dry  farming  was  then 
unknown — at  the  line  of  20  inches  of  average  annual  rainfall, 
and  showed  the  danger  that  farming  must  run  from  frequent 
droughts  east  of  this  line  in  that  belt  of  the  Great  Plains 
trending  north  and  south,  which  lies  between  the  rainfall  lines 
of  20  and  28  inches  and  which  he  first  called  "subarid;"  but 
the  name  "subarid"  was  later,  on  suggestions  received  in 
Washington,  changed  to  "subhumid"  as  a  less  unpleasant 
term.  He  recognized  an  increasing  stream  supply  during  a 
decade  previous  to  the  preparation  of  his  report;  but,  instead 
of  explaining  it,  as  many  have  done,  by  an  increase  of  rainfall, 
he  ascribed  it  to  an  increased  "run-off"  due  to  artificial  changes 
in  the  land  surface.  It  may  be  noted,  in  passing,  that  the  term 
"run-off,"  now  in  general  use,  was  invented  by  Powell;  his 
correlated  term  "fly-off,"  for  rainfall  that  is  lost  by  evapora- 

40 


JOHN  -WIvSIvSY   POWELL — DAVIS 

tion,  has  not  been  adopted.  He  scouted  the  idea  that  any 
operations  of  man  can  have  brought  about  increased  precipi- 
tation, but  added,  "if  it  be  true  that  increase  of  the  water  sup- 
ply is  due  to  increase  in  precipitation,  as  many  have  supposed, 
the  fact  is  not  cheering  to  the  agriculturist  of  the  arid  re- 
gion. .  .  .  Usually  such  changes  go  in  cycles,  and  the 
opposite  or  compensating  change  may  reasonably  be  antici- 
pated," for  if  the  increase  of  streams  results  from  an  increase 
of  rainfall,  "we  shall  have  to  expect  a  speedy  return  to  ex- 
treme aridity,  in  which  case  a  large  portion  of  the  agricultural 
industries  of  the  country  now  growing  up  would  be  destroyed" 
(91).  Powell  plainly  stated  that  only  a  small  fraction  of  the 
arid  lands  was  available  for  agriculture,  and  pointed  out  that 
the  redemption  of  the  areas  that  could  be  irrigated  would  in- 
volve difficult  engineering  problems  far  too  large  for  indi- 
vidual farmers,  and  possible  only  through  co-operative  labor 
controlled  by  carefully  considered  legislation ;  he  saw,  further, 
that  when  all  this  should  be  accomplished  only  a  small  portion 
of  the  arid  region  could  be  cultivated.  These  principles  are 
well  enough  understood  now,  after  a  generation  of  experience ; 
but  they  were  novelties  when  published,  and  served  as  needed 
corrections  of  exaggerated  stories  then  current. 

The  report  on  the  arid  region  proposed  a  fivefold  classifi- 
cation of  the  Western  public  lands,  not  based  on  the  traditions 
of  the  East,  but  on  the  facts  and  conditions  of  the  West.  The 
five  classes  were  named  mineral,  coal,  irrigable,  pasturage,  and 
timber  lands.  With  mineral  lands  the  report  had  nothing  to 
do.  The  abundance  and  importance  of  lignite  coals  was  briefly 
stated ;  they  were,  indeed,  regarded  as  "inexhaustible  by  any 
population  which  the  country  can  support  for  any  length  of 
time  that  human  prevision  can  contemplate;"  it  was  recom- 
mended that  their  area  should  be  determined  by  a  thorough 
geological  survey.  The  areas  classified  as  timber  lands  were 
chiefly  the  higher  plateaus  and  mountains,  which  have  prac- 
tically no  value  aside  from  their  forests ;  but  it  was  explicitly 
stated  that  these  areas  were  by  no  means  wholly  occupied  by 
standjng  timber,  because  of  the  terrible  devastation  by  forest 
fires.  Emphatic  warning  was  given  of  this  danger  in  the  arid 
region.  Most  of  the  fires  were  ascribed  to  intentional  burning 


NATIONAL   ACADEMY   BIOGRAPHICAL  "MEMOIRS — VOL.   VIII 

by  Indians,  who,  displaced  from  lower  lands  by  the  advance 
of  white  settlers  and  impelled  to  hunt  fur-bearing  animals  for 
trade,  deliberately  set  fire  to  the  forests  for  the  purpose  of 
driving  the  game;  therefore  the  Indians  should  be  removed 
from  the  forested  areas.  |  The  burning  of  forests  in  the  high- 
lands of  the  arid  region  has  been  on  a  "scale  so  vast  that  the 
amount  taken  from  the  lands  for  industrial  purposes  sinks  by 
comparison  into  insignificance"  (15).  Powell  tells  that  he 
had  "witnessed  two  fires  in  Colorado,  each  of  which  destroyed 
more  timber  than  all  that  used  by  the  citizens  of  that  State 
from  its  settlement  to  the  present  day,  and  at  least  three  in 
Utah,  each  of  which  has  destroyed  more  timber  than  that 
taken  by  the  people  of  the  Territory  since  its  occupation.  .  .  . 
Everywhere  throughout  the  Rocky  Mountain  region  the  ex- 
plorer, away  from  the  beaten  paths  of  civilization,  meets  great 
areas  of  dead  forests ;  ...  in  seasons  of  great  drought 
the  mountaineer  sees  the  heavens  filled  with  clouds  of 
smoke.  .  .  .  If  the  fires  are*  prevented,  the  renewal  by 
annual  growth  will  more  than  replace  that  taken  by  man.  .  .  . 
No  limitation  to  the  use  of  the  forests  need  be  made"  (17). 
"Once  protected  from  fires,  the  forests  will  increase  in  extent 
and  value.  This  protection,  though  sure  to  come  at  last,  will 
be  tardy"  (18).  It  is  interesting  to  note  in  this  connection 
Powell's  unqualified  statement  that  "fire  is  the  immediate  cause 
of  the  lack  of  timber  on  the  prairies"  (16),  and  the  emphasis 
that  he  gave  to  the  occurrence  of  large  burned  areas  in  the 
East  at  the  time  of  the  discovery  of  America.  He  wrote  sev- 
eral years  later:  "When  the  lands  [in  the  East]  were  plowed 
the  fires  were  stopped,  and  vast  regions  that  were  prairies  at 
that  time  are  now  forest-clad.  Today  [1895]  the  forests  of 
the  United  States  are  somewhat  more  extensive  than  they  were 
at  the  landing  of  Columbus"  (Nat.  Geogr.  Monogr.,  71). 

In  classifying  all  the  lands  between  the  highland  timber 
areas  and  the  lowland  irrigable  areas  as  pasturage  lands, 
Powell  did  not  overlook  that  certain  districts  are  really  deserts, 
too  low  for  timber,  out  of  reach  of  irrigation,  and  too  dry  for 
pasture.  He  wrote:  "In  very  low  altitudes  and  latitudes  the 
grasses  are  so  scant  as  to  be  of  no  value ;  here  the  true  deserts 
are  found.  These  conditions  obtain  in  southern  California, 

42 


JOHN    \VKS1.1-V    POWKlvL — DAVIS 

southern  Nevada,  southern  Arizona,  and  southern  New  Mex- 
ico, where  broad  stretches  of  land  are  naked  of  vegetation; 
but  in  ascending  to  the  higher  lands  the  grass  steadily  m- 
creases"  (20).  The  threefold  classification  therefore  seems 
to  have  been  for  the  sake  of  simplicity;  surely  the  confident 
assertion  of  value  in  the  larger  part  of  the  arid  region  as  a 
cattle-raising  country  has  been  abundantly  verified.  The 
sparse  growth  of  herbage  on  the  grazing  lands  demanded  large 
farm  units;  Powell  advised  that  the  minimum  be  set  at  four 
square  miles,  or  2,560  acres.  He  further  advocated  a  some- 
what ideal  plan  of  settlement,  in  which  the  ranchmen's  homes 
should  be  grouped  around  irrigable  tracts,  so  as  to  secure  the 
benefits  of  social  organization,  and,  as  he  thought  that  fences 
would  not  be  used,  he  inferred  that  the  herds  must  roam  freely 
under  local  communal  regulations.  Practice  has  not  always 
verified  these  anticipations ;  roaming  heads  have  been  common 
on  open  public  lands ;  but  large  areas  of  private  lands  are  now 
enclosed  by  long  fences  of  barbed  wire,  hardly  known  in  1879. 
J"""Work  for  a  generation  was  laid  out  in  jPp wall's  far-sighted 
treatment  of  the  irrigable  districts.  ^He  showed  that  their  total 
area  must  be  small  in  relation  to  the  vast  extent  of  the  whole 
arid  region ;  he  studied  the  amount  of  water  that  an  irrigated 
farm  would  need,  and  concluded  that  a  continuous  flow  of  one 
cubic  foot  of  water  per  second  would  serve  from  80  to  100 
acres ;  he.  advised,  a  better  construction  of  canals  to  prevent^ 
the  excessive  waste  that  was  then  almost  universal.  Streams 
must  be  gauged  to  determine  how  much  land  they  can  serve; 
reservoir  sites  must  be  reserved  against  the  time  when  thejcA 
will  be  needed  to  save  the  winter  run-ofLjlBut  the  most  sig- 
nificant sentences  in  this  part  of  his  remarkable  report  concern 
the  danger  of  monopoly  in  the  ownership  of  water,  and  in  this 
respect  Powell  showed  himself  a  pioneer  conservationist^jHe. 
doubted  the  wisdom  of  too  rapid  enterprise,  prompted  by  the 
intense  desire  for  speedy  development  on  the  part  of  first- 
comers,  who  give  little  heed  to  "philosophic  considerations  of 
political  economy  or  to  the  ultimate  condition  of  affairs  in 
which  their  present  enterprises  will  result.  ...  If,  in  the 
eagerness  for  present  development,  a  land-and-water  system 
shall  grow  up  in  which  the  practical  control  of  agriculture 

43 


NATIONAL  ACADEMY  BIOGRAPHICAL   MEMOIRS — VOL.   VIII 

shall  fall  into  the  hands  of  water  companies,  evils  will  result 
therefrom  that  generations  may  not  be  able  to  correct,  and  the 
very  men  who  are  now  lauded  as  benefactors  to  the  country 
will,  in  the  ungovernable  reaction  which  is  sure  to  come,  be 
denounced  as  oppressors  of  the  people.  The  right  to  use  water 
should  inhere  in  the  land  to  be  irrigated,  and  water  rights 
should  go  with  land  titles'  (41).  "The  ancient  principles  of 
common  law  applying  to  the  use  of  natural  streams,  so  wise 
and  equitable  in  a  humid  region,  would,  if  applied  to  the  arid 
region,  practically  prohibit  the  growth  of  its  most  important 
industries,"  because  the  water  there  "has  no  value  in  its  nat- 
ural channel.  .  .  .  Water  rights  are  being  practically  sev- 
ered from  the  natural  channels  of  the  streams ;  and  this  must 
be  done.  ...  In  the  change  it  is  to  be  feared  that  water 
rights  will  in  many  cases  be  separated  from  all  land  rights 
as  the  system  is  now  forming.  If  this  fear  is  not  groundless 
to  the  extent  that  such  a  separation  is  secured,  water  will  be- 
come a  property  independent  of  the  land,  and  this  property 
will  be  gradually  absorbed  by  a  few.  Monopolies  of  water 
will  be  secured,  and  the  whole  agriculture  of  the  [arid]  coun- 
try will  be  tributary  thereto — a  condition  of  affairs  which  an 
American  citizen  having  in  view  the  interests  of  the  largest 
number  of  people  cannot  contemplate  with  favor.  .  .  . 
The  right  to  the  water  should  inhere  in  the  land  where  it  is 
used,  .  .  .  not  to  the  individual  or  company  constructing 
the  canals  by  which  it  is  used"  (42,  43).  A  natural  result  of 
this  invaluable  report  was  Powell's  appointment  as  a  member 
of  the  Public  Land  Commission  by  the  Senate  and  House  of 
Representatives  in  1879. 

The  enormous  import  of  Powell's  conclusions  may  be  under- 
stood when  it  is  recognized  how  many  of  them  have  been 
given  practical  application  on  a  large  scale,  in  more  or  less 
modified  form,  by  governmental  bureaus.  Land  classification 
and  stream  measurement  are  now  important  functions  of  our 
national  Geological  Survey;  the  same  survey  for  a  time  re- 
ported upon  reservoir  sites  and  upon  the  area  and  value  of 
forests,  but  the  latter  duty  ha's  later  been  given  to  the  Forestry 
Bureau,  under  which  the  greatest  efforts  are  made  to  secure 
adequate  protection  from  forest  fires;  the  difficulty  which 

44 


JOHN   WESLEY   POWEIJ, — DAVIS 

makes  this  protection  "tardy,"  as  Powell  predicted  it  would  be, 
not  being  found  in  mere  problems  of  administration,  but  alto- 
gether in  the  failure  of  a  negligent  Congress  to  provide  ade- 
quate funds  for  the  relatively  moderate  expense  involved. 
The  survey  of  reservoir  sites  and  the  large  engineering  works, 
foreseen  as  necessary  for  the  full  developmnt  of  the  possibili- 
ties of  irrigation,  are  now  conducted  on  an  enormous  scale  by 
the  Reclamation  Service,  an  outgrowth  of  a  branch  of  the  Geo- 
logical Survey  and  one  of  the  best  and  most  beneficent  of  our 
governmental  undertakings.  The  introduction  of  electric- 
power  plants,  advantageously  installed  in  connection  with  irri- 
gation dams,  and  of  immense  economic  value  in  using  a  natu- 
ral supply  of  energy  that  would  otherwise  be  wasted,  have  only 
increased  the  importance  of  everything  that  Powell  said  re- 
garding the  necessity  of  guarding  our  water  supplies  from 
monopolistic  control  and  conserving  them  for  the  common 
good. 

When  all  this  is  appreciated,  Powell  must  come  to  be  re-1 
garded  as  one  of  our  great  national  benefactors.    The  opinions  \ 
of  two  highly  competent  judges  may  here  be  quoted.     Gilbert 
wrote,  in  effect,  that  Powell's  Report  on  the  Lands  of  the  Arid 
Regions  set   forth  with  marvelous   insight  the  conditions  by 
which  the  problem  of  their  best  utilization  is  surrounded;  his 
views  were  discredited  at  the  time,  because  he  announced  that 
only  a  small  percentage  of  the  Far  West  can  ever  be  reclaimed 
for  agriculture.     The  Report  raised  a  storm  of  indignation,"' 
because  it  characterized  as  semi-arid  the  middle  belt  of  the 
Plains,  toward  which  settlement  was  then  tending,  yet  today  it 
is  recognized  as  a  classic  treatise.  _/ 

Van  Hise  wrote  in  a  similar  vein,  telling  how  Powell  gave 
the  benefit  of  his  knowledge  of  the  arid  regions  to  the  legis- 
lators of  the  nation.     He  saw  that  the  arid  lands  were  a  pos-1 
sible  great  resource  to  the  country,  but  an  exceptional  resource,  I 
which  could  not  be  wisely  handled  under  the  common  law  as  ijj 
had  been  developed  in  humid  regions.     He  saw  that  there  was 
no  danger  of  monopoly  of  land,  but  that  the  real  danger  was 
the  monopoly  of  water — that  he  who  controlled  the  water  was 
the  master  of  the  land.     Consequently  he  proposed  broad  and 
statesmanlike  legislation  for  the  division  of  the  lands  of  the 

45 


NATION AL   ACADEMY   BIOGRAPHICAL    MEMOIRS — VOL.   VIII 

West  which  are  not  mining  lands  into  several  classes,  and  ad- 
vised that  these  lands  should  be  controlled  by  special  laws. 

The  suggestions  which  Powell  made  regarding  the  economic 
problems  here  treated  have  been  in  large  measure  incorporated 
into  statutes.  The  effort  for  reform  was  complicated  by  con- 
flicting interests,  and  at  times  it  was  a  disheartening  struggle ; 
but  it  is  a  pleasure  to  record  that  during  the  Major's  last  sick- 
ness he  was  able  to  know  of  the  passage  of  the  Reclamation 
Act,  the  most  important  triumph  of  the  arid-lands  agitation. 


THE  GEOLOGICAL  SURVEY. 

In  no  case  was  Powell's  capacity  to  turn  the  course  of  events 
more  strikingly  shown  than  in  the  organization  of  our  present 
national  Geological  Survey.  Through  the  '70*5  the  existence 
of  several  official  yet  independent  surveys  of  the  Western 
country  under  different  departments  of  the  Government  re- 
sulted in  scandalous  rivalries  and  animosities.  Powell,  at  the 
head  of  one  of  these  organizations,  strove  to  reach*  an  adjust- 
ment by  mutual  consent;  failing  in  this,  he  boldly  advocate! 
complete  reorganization.  He  had  advised  the  consolidation 
of  the  several  rival  surveys  in  1874,  and  it  appears  to  have 
been  at  his  suggestion  that  Congress,  in  June,  1878,  called 
upon  the  National  Academy  of  Sciences,  of  which  he  was  then 
not  a  member,  for  advice.  A  committee  of  the  Academy  re- 
ported in  November  a  plan  which  had  been,  in  its  main  feat- 
ures, formulated  and  advocated  by  Powell,  involving  the  abo- 
lition of  the  rival  surveys  and  the  creation  of  two  separate 
bureaus — one,  an  enlargement  of  the  Coast  Survey  under  the 
title  of  Coast  and  Interior  Survey,  for  geodetic  and  topo- 
graphic mensuration ;  the  other,  a  Geological  Survey  for 
studies  of  structure  and  resources,  not  of  the  United  States, 
but  of  the  "public  domain ;"  all  matters  concerning  the  dispo- 
sition and  sale  of  public  lands  being  left  to  the  General  Land 
OfficeMyThe  present  generation  should  be  reminded  that,  dur- 
ing the  discussion  of  the  recommended  organization,  strong 
pressure  was  brought  to  bear  upon  Congress  in  favor  of  plac- 
ing all  topographic  surveys  in  charge  of  the  Engineer  Corps 
of  the  Army,  and  European  precedents  for  this  plan  were 

46 


JOHN   WESLEY    POWEU, — DAVIS 

abundantly  cited.  But  it  was  urged,  on  the  other  hand,  that 
our  needs  would  be  better  served  by  civil  rather  than  by  mili- 
tary engineers,  because  the  uses  of  our  public  domain  would 
be  much  more  largely  in  the  way  of  peaceful  settlement  than 
of  warlike  campaigns.  On  this  point,  as  on  many  others, 
Powell's  opinion  seems  to  have  had  weight.  His  view  of  the 
entire  problem  was  presented  in  a  letter  as  a  supplement  to  the 
report  of  the  Committee  of  the  National  Academy;  and  this 
letter  the  Hon.  Abram  S.  Hewitt,  then  a  leading  member  of 
the  House  of  Representatives,  urged  all  his  colleagues  to  read, 
because  the  whole  subject  of  reorganization  of  the  surveys 
was  there  "so  much  better  treated  than  any  gentleman  on  the 
floor  can  hope  to  do." 

The  "Geological  Survey"  was  established  by  an  act  of  Con- 
gress on  March  3,  1879.  Although  its  work  was,  as  noted 
above,  limited  to  the  "public  domain,"  the  name  "United  States 
Geological  Survey"  was  at  once  assumed.  A  Bureau  of  Eth- 
nology was  created  at  about  the  same  time,  but  the  duties  of 
the  Coast  Survey  and  the  Land  Office  were  not  changed,  and 
no  special  provision  was  made  for  a  topographic  survey.  It  is 
significant  that  the  law  establishing  the  Geological  Survey 
mentioned  the.  classification  of  the  public  lands  before  the  ex- 
amination of  their  geological  structure.  It  is  significant  also 
that  on  account  of  Powell's  active  share  in  bringing  the  new 
Survey  into  existence  he  refused  to  be  considered  a  candidate 
for  its  directorship.  He  was  appointed  instead  to  the  director- 
ship of  the  Bureau  of  Ethnology,  and  Clarence  King,  previ- 
ously chief  of*the  famous  Fortieth  Parallel  Survey,  was  ap- 
pointed Director  of  the  new  Geological  Survey  in  March, 
1879  ;  lle  resigned  two  years  later  on  the  ground  of  preferring 
personal  investigation  to  administration.  Powell,  believing  his 
duty  in  the  Bureau  of  Ethnology  to  be  permanent  and  engross-^ 
ing,  had  given  up  "all  thought  of  continuing  his  work  as  a  ' 
geologist ;''  but  he  was  appointed  Director  of  the  Geological 
Survey  after  King's  resignation,  while  still  retaining  his  other 
directorship,  and  returned  to  geological  work  in  March,  1881,  1 
with  vigor  and  enthusiasm. 

Many  of  the  activities  of  the  Geological  Survey  were  then 
for  over  ten  years  so  characteristic  of  Powell's  method  of  work 

47 


NATIONAL   ACADEMY   BIOGRAPHICAL    MEMOIRS — VOL.   VIII 

that  an  account  of  them  deserves  an  important  place  in  a  me- 
moir of  his  life.  The  breadth  of  ttye  organization  reflected  his 
native  interest  in  comprehensive  schemes  and  his  unusual  ca- 
pacity in  developing  them.  King  h,ad  already  secured  the 
services  of  a  number  of  geologists  from  the  several  surveys 
that  had  been  disbanded  and  Powell  brought  in  still  others ; 
thus  a  good  volume  of  inherited  work  was  quickly  brought 
forward  for  publication./  He  had  in  Gilbert  a  wise  adviser  on 
scientific  problems  and  in  McChesney  an  able  aid  in  all  finan- 
cial matters.  \The  enlistment  of  many  professors  of  geology  in 
colleges  all  over  the  country,  to  contribute  reports  on  subjects 
that  they  had  previously  studied  independently,  showed  the 
broadly  inclusive  spirit  in  which  the  development  of  the  Survey 
was  conceived ;  thus  the  Director  secured  the  personal  interest 
of  many  widely  distributed  experts  in  the  maintenance  of  the 
Survey,  and  at  the  same  time  brought  together  much  accumu- 
lated knowledge  in  local  or  special  fields.  This  was  a  wise 
step  at  the  beginning,  when  the  supply  of  well-trained  young 
American  geologists  was  small ;  but  such  a  method  of  securing 
field  geologists  was  outgrown  half  a  generation  later,  when  the 
students  of  the  professors  of  the  earlier  time  had  in  good 
number  become  expert  members  of  the  Survey,  practiced  in 
methods  adapted  to  its  special  needs,  and  not  distracted  from 
its  work  by  duties  to  other  institutions,  j  The  standard  of  tech- 
nical preparation  expected  of  members  in  various  branches  of 
geology  and  topography  was  at  the  outset  necessarily  low,  for 
there  had  been  no  demand  to  excite  a  well-trained  supply,  and 
the  pressure  of  Congressmen  to  secure  places  for  their  rela- 
tives and  friends  did  not  tend  to  raise  the  standard ;  but  it  was 
raised  as  rapidly  as  possible,  and  the  Survey  thus  reacted  most 
helpfully  on  the  development  of  the  geological  departments  in 
our  universities.  In  the  meantime,  if  "Senators'  nephews" 
sometimes  gained  positions  as  camp  assistants  or  rodmen,  they 
were  seldom  capable  of  geological  work,  and  in  any  case 
Powell  squarely  accepted  all  responsibility  as  to  the  character 
of  his  appointees.  He  wrote  in  the  Sixth  Annual  Report: 
"If,  then,  improper  persons  are  employed,  it  is  wholly  the  Di- 
rector's fault." 

I^A  liberal  policy  was  adopted  regarding  the  exchange  of  the 

48 


JOHN   WESLEY   POWEIJ. — DAVIS 

Survey  publications  with  productive  geologists,  whereby  many 
an  isolated  worker  was  kep£  in  touch  with  the  progress  of  the 
great  national  undertaking.  The  early  reports  and  mono- 
graphs were,  moreover,  .of  exceptional  interest  and  immedi- 
ately commanded  the  admiration  of  the  whole  geological  world. 
A  sound  method  of  business  administration  was  developed. 
Powell's  detailed  account  of  it  before  a  Joint  Commission  of 
Congress  in  1885  made  a  most  favorable  impression  on  the 
majority  of  the  Senators  and  Representatives  who  heard  him. 
A  full  statement  of  this  matter  is  given  in  systematic  form  in 
the  Eighth  Annual  Report,  and  a  briefer  statement 'of  the  or- 
ganization of  the  Survey  was  communicated  to  the  National 
Academy  in  1884  and  printed  in  the  American  Journal  of 
Science  for  February,  1885;  but  it  is  the  original  report 
of  the  Joint  Commission,  an  exceptionally  interesting  public 
document,  published  in  the  form  of  questions  and  answers 
usual  in  such  cases,  that  best  shows  Powell's  close  familiarity 
with  all  details  of  survey  work  and  his  remarkable  competence 
in  setting  forth  methods  of  administration.  )  Those  who  were 
then  members  of  the  Survey  will  remember  how  nearly  every 
one  was  for  a  time  pressed  into  the  work  of  summarizing  the 
reports  of  foreign  topographical  and  geological  surveys,  so 
that  the  Director  should  have  precise  and  detailed  information 
in  his  hands;  his  testimony  illustrates  how  ably  he  used  the 
varied  material  thus  placed  at  his  disposal. 

Powell's  third  report — the  Fourth  Annual  Report  of  the 
Survey — announces  that  the  congressional  act  making  appro- 
priations for  the  Survey  for  1882-1883  required  the  prepara- 
tion of  "a  geologic  map  of  the  United  States;"  thus  for  the 
first  time  explicit  authority  was  given  for  extending  the  opera- 
tions of  the  Survey  over  the  whole  country,  and  therewith  im- 
plicit authority  for  the  preparation  of  a  topographic  map  as 
the  necessary  basis  of  the  geologic  mapj  Who  can  say  how 
far  Powell  himself  suggested  the  use  of  these  highly  signifi- 
cant words!  (Reports  on  topographic  work  were  thereafter 
placed  at  the  head  of  the  list  of  administrative  statements  in 
the  annual  reports  issued  by  Powell.  The  failure  of  Congress 
to  establish  three  years  before  an  independent  topographic  bu- 
reau was  thus  repaired,  and  by  a  curious  combination  of  cir- 

49 


NATIONAL   ACADEMY   BIOGRAPHICAL    MEMOIRS— VOL.   VIII 

cumstances  Powell  found  himself  in  charge  of  both  'classes  of 
work — topographic  and  geologic — that  had  been  assigned  to 
separate  bureaus  in  the  recommendation  of  the  National  Acad- 
emy, and  of  the  work  in  the  Bureau  of  Ethnology  as  well. 
About  six  years  later,  1888,  the  conduct  of  an  Irrigation  Sur- 
vey was  also  placed  under  his  charge ;  never  before  or  since 
has,  so  large  and  so  varied  a  scientific  responsibility  been  con- 
centrated in  the  hands  of  a  single  governmental  official  at 
Washington. ; 

TOPOGRAPHICAL    MAP. 

The  sheets  of  the  topographical  map  surveyed,  drawn,  and 
printed  by  the  Survey  have  been  immensely  serviceable ;  in- 
deed, no  publications  of  the  Survey  have  had  up  to  the  present 
date  a  greater  general  usefulness  than  this  map,  which,  under 
Powell's  strong  initiative,  was  undertaken  for  the  whole  coun- 
try. Scientists  of  the  younger  generation,  who  are  now  profit- 
ing from  the  large  supply  of  good  maps  available  for  their 
uses,  can  hardly  appreciate  the  rarity  of  cartographic  material 
regarding  nearly  every  part  of  our  country — the  coasts  and  the 
lake  shores  excepted — thirty  years  ago.  The  change  from 
geographic  barbarism  of  that  earlier  day  to  the  relative  civili- 
zation of  the  present  time  is  due  more  to  Powell  than  to  any 
other  one  man,  and  in  accomplishing  this  change  Gannett  was 
for  many  years  his  right  hand. 

The  plan  for  the  topographic  survey  of  the  United  States  is 
set  forth  in  the  Sixth  and  Seventh  Annual  Reports.  "The 
map  should  be  so  simple  that  it  can  be  used  by  all  people  of 
intelligence.  .  .  .  The  uses  for  topographic  maps  . 
are  very  many ;  but  there  is  no  demand  more  exacting  than 
that  made  by  the  geologist,  and  if  properly  made  to  meet  his 
wants  they  will  subserve  the  purposes  of  the  civil  engineer  and 
the  agriculturist,  the  military  engineer  and  the  naturalist." 
Map-making  in  Europe  had  been  largely  in  the  hands  of  mili- 
tary-engineers, as  has  been  intimated  above,  and  maps  had 
been  there  prepared  chiefly  for  military  or  cadastral  purposes. 
Our  needs  are  neither  military  nor  cadastral,  but  civil  and 
general,  and  our  methods  must  meet  our  needs.  "No  nation 
had  yet  undertaken  to  execute  a  work  of  this  character  over  a 
region  of  such  magnitude.  It  has  therefore  been  deemed  of 

So 


JOHN   WESLIvY   POWELL — DAVIS 

prime  importance  that  the  survey  should  be  conductecl  with 
utmost  regard  to  economy."  Relief  had  usually  been  repre- 
sented by  shading  or  by  hachures ;  shading  is  too  vague,  hach- 
ures  are  too  expensive,  contours  are  definite  and  not  over 
costly ;  hence  contour  maps  were  determined  upon.  Co-opera- 
tive work  with  States,  first  undertaken  in  1884  with  Massachu- 
setts, has  since  then  been  greatly  extended.  Singularly  enough, 
no  provision  was  made  at  first  for  the  sale  of  the  topographic 
sheets  to  the  public;  but  when  this  was  allowed  the  price  did 
not  include  any  part  of  the  cost  of  production  apart  from  paper 
and  printing;  a  wide  distribution  was  thus  secured.  The  same 
wise  method  was  early  applied  in  determining  the  price  asked 
for  Survey  reports  and  later  for  geologic  folios. 

The  plans  as  outlined  at  the  beginning  of  this  great  topo- 
graphic work  were  admirable ;  the  difficulty  of  executing  them 
was  great.  Liberal  sums  were,  available  for  topographic  sur- 
veying, but  for  a  time  it  was  impossible  to  find  trained  topog- 
raphers in  the  desired  number;  hence  many  insufficiently 
trained  men  had  to  be  employed  and  their  training  came  in  the 
field.  The  pressure  for  the  rapid  production  of  maps  at  mod- 
erate cost  over  large  areas  led  to  hasty  work  insufficiently  in- 
spected ;  hence  the  published  maps  were  not  always  correct  to 
scale  of  publication.  In  some  cases  the  dangerous  practice  was 
permitted  of  redrawing  in  new  form  the  maps  produced  by 
previous  surveys,  and  as  a  result  certain,  sheets  of  deplorable 
inaccuracy  were  issued ;  some  of  these  exhibit  features  that 
are  hardly  recognizable  on  the  excellent  maps  of  later  date  for 
the  same  districts.  Nevertheless,  progress  toward  greater  ac- 
curacy was  rapid  afterward,  when  better  methods  were  intro- 
duced and  greater  cost  was  allowed  per  square  mile;  and  it 
may  now  be  seriously  questioned  whether  the  large  number  of 
excellent  maps  annually  issued  at  present  could  have  been  so 
soon  reached  in  any  way  but  by  plunging  in  boldly  and  rapidly 
instead  of  slowly  and  accurately  at  the  beginning.  Certain  it 
is  that  the  revelation  of  geographical  matters  of  fact  regarding 
large  areas  of  our  country,  as  portrayed  on  the  sheets  issued 
during  the  last  ten  or  fifteen  years,  is  of  immense  service  to 
us  all  today ;  and  this  service  must  be  counted  as  a  consequence 
of  Powell's  marvelous  initiative. 

Si 


NATIONAL,   ACADEMY   BIOGRAPHICAL    MEMOIRS — VOL.   VIII 

REPORTS  AND   FOUOS. 
V*"" 

The  many  geological  studies  published  in  annual  reports, 
monographs,  bulletins,  and  folios  exhibit  admirably  the  work 
of  individual  members  of  the  Survey;  but  they  reflect  credit 
also  on  the  Director,  who  knew  how  to  select  good  associates, 
and  who  wisely  trusted  them  with  great  responsibilities  and 
gave  them  great  liberty  of  action.  Powell,  indeed,  had  so 
much  native  capacity  that  he  never  hesitated,  as  a  weaker 
Director  might  have  done,  to  employ  men  who  knew  more 
geology  than  he  did  himself.  The  "Correlation  Papers,"  pre- 
pared according  to  a  general  plan  by  eleven  specialists  under 
Gilbert's  supervision  to  summarize  knowledge  regarding  suc- 
cessive geological  periods,  contributed  greatly  to  a  broad  un- 
derstanding of  large  problems;  and  these  papers  constitute  a 
thoroughly  characteristic  product  of  Powell's  administration. 
The  annual  volumes  giving  statistical  summaries  of  mineral 
resources  also  deserve  special  mention  as  initiated  under 
Powell's  direction.  They  are  probably  as  accurate  as  possible 
under  the  conditions  of  their  preparation,  but  they  are  prob- 
ably not  so  accurate  as  they  appear  to  be.  The  geologic  folios, 
containing  sheets  of  the  geological  map  of  the  United  States 
which  the  Survey  had  been  instructed  to  prepare,  are  based  on 
a  uniform  and  comprehensive  plan,  and  exhibit,  like  the  topo- 
graphic maps,  Powell's  remarkable  foresight  and  breadth  of 
view.  The  plan  for  the  publication  of  the  folios  was  carefully 
discussed  in  several  conferences,  of  leading  geologists ;.  careful 
debate  was  given  to  the  general  explanatory  text  of  the  cover, 
to  the  scheme  of  coloring,  so  admirably  carried  into  effect  by 
the  engraving  department  of  the  Survey,  and  to  the  liberal 
presentation  of  topography,  geology,  structure,  and  economic 
features  on  separate  sheets,  all  this  being  told  in  the  Tenth 
Annual  Report  (1888-1889).  The  first  geologic  folio  was 
issued  in  1892,  thirteen. years  after  the  establishment  of  the 
Survey;  later  folios  show  marked  improvement  in  various 
directions,  the  text  in  particular  becoming  more  elaborate  and 
pictorial  illustrations  were  abundant ;  but  the  original  plan  is 
still  followed,  except  for  the  inevitable  departure  from  the 
intention  that  the  text  should  be  "so  prepared  as  to  be  intelli- 

52 


JOHN   WESLEY   POWELL — DAVIS 

gible  to  users  who  are  not  trained  geologists."  This  feature 
of  the  plan  has  not  been  carried  out,  and  cannot  be  carried  out 
unless  a  great  part  of  the  laborious  and  expensive  accumula- 
tion of  scientific  fact  and  inference  is  not  published  in  direct 
connection  with  the  geological  map  to  which  it  so  closely  ap- 
plies. Certain  critics  have  questioned  whether  another  form 
of  publication  than  a  large  folio  would  not  be  more  generally 
useful,  and  some  folios  have  lately  been  prepared  in  the  form 
of  bulletins  with  folded  maps  for  field  use;  but  for  purposes 
of  study  in  every  other  place  than  on  the  ground  the  folio 
form  introduced  under  Powell  is  the  most  convenient.  If  the 
whole  series  of  folios,  when  completed,  proves  to  be  a  heavy 
care  for  any  library,  this  must  be  charged  against  the  glorious 
misfortune  of  our  large  national  area. 

IRRIGATION  SURVEY. 

The  Tenth  Annual  Report  tells  of  the  Irrigation  Survey,  in- 
stituted in  1888,  as  a  department  of  the  Geological  Survey, 
for  the  determination  of  the  extent  to  which  arid  districts  can 
be  redeemed  by  irrigation  and  for  the  selection  of  sites  for 
reservoirs,  but  not  the  construction  of  irrigation  works.  This 
was  a  fitting  though  a  delayed  consequence  of  the  report  on 
the  arid  lands  ten  years  earlier;  but  it  added  a  heavy  weight 
to  the  duties  of  the  Director,  and  probably  led  to  the  appoint- 
ment of  Gilbert  in  1889,  and  later  of  Walcott,  as  chief  geolo- 
gist. The  establishment  of  the  Irrigation  Survey  must  be  re- 
garded as  having  been  prompted  by  Powell  himself,  for  he  had 
continually  urged  upon  Congress  the  necessity  of  making  ap- 
propriations for  such  investigations,  and  had  delivered  ad- 
dresses and  written  magazine  articles  on  the  same  subject. 
Although  the  irrigation  work  was  cut  off  in  1892,  much  prog- 
ress in  this  direction  was  accomplished,  as  attested  first  by  the 
growth  for  several  years  in  the  size  of  the  special  annual  re- 
ports on  irrigation  problems  and  fourteen  years  later  by  the 
establishment  of  the  Reclamation  Service;  and  all  this  must  be 
credited  to  Powell's  initiative  and  to  the  enthusiasm  that  he 
aroused  in  the  younger  men  whom  he  selected  to  carry  on  the  , 
work. 

53 


NATIONAL   ACADEMY   BIOGRAPHICAL    MEMOIRS — VOL.   VIII 


ADMINISTRATION. 

The  various  aspects  of  the  Geological  Survey  here  sum- 
marized from  successive  volumes  of  Annual  Reports  reflect 
clearly  enough  the  character  impressed  on  this  great  organiza- 
tion by  Powell  as  its  Director;  but  they  give  a  very  imperfect 
picture  of  the  labor  demanded  of  him  in  maintaining  the  Sur- 
vey. A  governmental  bureau  depends  on  one  side  upon  the 
annual  appropriations  of  a  changing  Congress,  and  on  the 
other  side  upon  the  loyal  and  expert  work  of  its  many  mem- 
bers. The  continuation  of  such  a  bureau  and  the  fate  of  its 
members  might  be  left  by  a  philosophical  outsider  entirely  to 
the  wisdom  of  Congressmen,  because  in  the  abstract  the 
bureau  exists  only  to  carry  out  the  will  of  the  people  as  ex- 
pressed by  their  Representatives ;  but  in  the  concrete  case  of 
any  single  bureau,  especially  of  a  bureau  originally  established 
for  the  performance  of  a  great  and  long-enduring  task,  many 
other  considerations  enter  into  the  problem,  as  Powell  well 
knew,  and  weighty  among  these  is  a  reasonable  assurance  of 
steady  employment  for  those  who  have  in  good  faith  cast  their 
lot  in  the  work  of  the  bureau,  with  a  fair  expectation  of  its 
long  existence,  and  also  an  honorable  ambition  of  the  Director 
regarding  the  distant  completion  of  the  important  task  com- 
mitted to  his  charge,  already  begun  or  planned  for  the  imme- 
diate future.  Not  only  general  continuity  of  work,  but  steadi- 
ness in  rate  of  work — or  at  least  the  avoidance  of  a  decreasing 
rate — is  essential  for  an  employee's  peace  of  mind  and  a  Di- 
rector's satisfaction ;  increase  may  be  welcomed,  but  retrench- 
ment is  at  once  an  embarrassment  to  the  Director  who  is  com- 
pelled to  execute  it,  and  a  hardship  to  those  upon  whom  it  is 
executed.  The  approach  of  the  critical  season  when  Con- 
gressional appropriations  are  usually  voted  is,  therefore,  un- 
avoidably a  time  of  anxiety  for  the  members  of  a  bureau  in 
which  the  work  necessarily  changes  to  some  extent  every  year, 
for  some  members  must  lose  their  positions  if  the  work  is  re- 
duced; and  it  is  a  particularly  anxious  time  to  the  Director, 
upon  whom  the  responsibility  for  maintaining  the  bureau  so 
largely  depends;  all  the  more  so  to  a  Director  who,  like  "the 

54 


jonx  \VKSI.KY  i-o\\  i;i,i, — DAVIS 

Major,"  felt  a  deep  personal  solicitude  for  the  welfare  of  his 
fellow-workers,  as  if  they  were  members  of  his  family. 

The  internal  organization  of  a  scientific  bureau  is,  as  com- 
pared to  this  external  responsibility,  an  enjoyable  pastime  to 
an  able  Director  surrounded  by  loyal  associates.  One  can, 
indeed,  feel  when  looking  over  the  annual  administrative  re- 
ports of  the  Geological  Survey  that  Powell  had  a  lively  pleas- 
ure in  the  internal  part  of  his  work,  and  the  same  impression 
was  given  to  visitors  who,  from  time  to  time,  heard  him  hum- 
ming a  tune  as  he  made  his  way  through  the  corridors  of  the 
Survey  building  to  look  at  the  work  of  some  of  his  staff.  If 
one  may  judge  by  the  years  of  the  rapidly  ascending  develop- 
ment of  the  Survey  from  1881  to  1892,  when  Powell's  staunch 
friends  in  Congress  acted  so  heartily  upon  his  suggestions  and 
gave  him  practically  every  opportunity  that  he  asked  for,  he 
had  during  that  notable  period  as  small  a  share  of  external 
anxiety  as  the  head  of  a  great  bureau  can  expect ;  yet  it  must 
not  be  overlooked  that  during  this  famous  decade  of  geological 
evolution  no  small  amount  of  Powell's  time  was  demanded  in 
presenting  his  plans  even  to  the  more  friendly  members  of 
Congressional  committees,  and  no  small  measure  of  skill  and 
patience  was  needed  in  winning  the  support  of  the  less  friendly 
members.  But  Powell  was  master  here,  as  well  as  in  a  boat 
trip  down  the  Colorado ;  he  had  enthusiasm  for  the  work  to  be 
accomplished;  he  was  deeply  impressed  with  its  great  im- 
portance in  the  development  of  the  country ;  he  was  honest  in 
his  presentation  of  its  merits ;  moreover,  he  understood  human 
nature  pretty  well,  and  knew  how  to  deal  with  men  of  many 
kinds ;  and  he  had  so  full  command  of  all  pertinent  facts  that 
his  opponents  in  Congressional  committees  were  often  left 
with  nothing  but  their  opposition  to  stand  on.  He  doubtless 
deserved  the  reputation  gained  in  the  minds  of  persons  long 
acquainted  with  Washington  affairs,  of  being  for  the  first  ten 
years  of  his  directorate  eminently  successful  in  accomplishing 
what  he  set  out  to  accomplish,  and  in  securing  such  Con- 
gressional enactments  and  appropriations  as  he  wished  to 
secure. 

Naturally,  therefore,  I  the  growth  of  the  Geological  Survey 
was  phenomenal.  It  began  with  an  appropriation  of  $100,000 

55 


NATIONAL  ACADEMY   BIOGRAPHICAL   MEMOIRS — VOL.   VIII 

and  with  39  members  on  its  pay-roll  for  the  year  ending  June 
30,  1880;  for  1881-1882,  the  first  full  year  of  Powell's  direc- 
torate, the  figures  were  $156,009  and  50;  in  1890-1891,  the 
maximum  appropriation  of  $719,000  was  reached;  the  next 
year  there  was  a  moderate  decrease  to  $631,000.  This  un- 
rivalled development  was  accompanied  by  a  swelling  volume 
of  publications  of  all  kinds,  lit  is  not  too  much  to  say  that 
the  eyes  of  the  geological  world  were  turned  in  aston- 
ished admiration  at  so  unprecedented  an  expansion,  which  had 
rapidly  brought  the  United  States  Geological  Survey  under 
Powell's  leadership  to  be  not  only  the  largest  organization  of 
its  kind,  but  the  largest  scientific  organization  of  any  kind  in 
the  world.  Instead  of  Philadelphia,  asr  at  first  suggested, 
Washington  became  ttue  inevitable  place  of  meeting  for  the 
International  Geological  Congress  of  1891 ;  at  the  close  of  the 
Western  excursion  that  followed  the  Congress,  Powell  led  a 
party  of  visiting  geologists  across  the  Arizona  plateau  to  the 
Colorado  canyon,  and  seemed  to  enjoy  giving  the  European 
members  a  sample  of  the  rough  Conditions  under  which  travel 
had  then  to  be  prosecuted  in  the  Far  West.  The  following 
winter  the  Cuvier  prize  was  fittingly  awarded  "to  the  collective 
work  of  the  Survey"  by  the  Academy  of  Sciences  of  Paris. 

RESIGNATION  FROM  THE  SURVEY. 

But  even  up  to  this  time  all  had  not  been  clear  sailing  in 
Washington.  Already,  in  1884,  opposition  to  the  rapid  growth 
of  the  Survey,  instigated,  it  is  said,  by  some  of  those  who  were 
left  out  of  the  Government  service  in  the  reorganization  of 
1879,  nad  arisen  in  Congress;  the  Joint  Commission,  above 
referred  to,  was  its  outcome.  Powell's  testimony  disclosed, 
however,  so  perfect  an  Organization,  he  showed  himself  so 
completely  in  control  of  it,  and  his  "statement  traversing  cer- 
tain averments"  made  by  members  of  the  opposing  minority 
in  Congress  was  so  satisfying  to  his  friends  in  the  majority, 
that  he  came  out  victorious  from  the  ordeal.  The  appropria- 
tion of  nearly  half  a  million  for  the  Survey  for  the  year  end- 
ing June  30,  1885,  was,  in  the  face  of  the  organized  opposition, 
raised  to  a  little  over  half  a  million  for  1885-1886,  and  so  con- 

56 


JOHN  \YKSI.KY   I'oNYKu, — PAYIS 

tinued  for  the  next  two  years ;  it  was  raised  to  $605,000  for 
1888-1889,  reduced  to  $551,000  for  1889-1890,  and  reached  the 
maximum  of  $719,000  for  1890-1891. 

The  decrease  of  nearly  $90,000  for  the  following  year 
marked  the  opening  of  a  period  of  adversity  which  culminated 
in  the  summer  of  1892.  The  establishment  of  the  Irrigation-^ 
Survey  four  years  before  had  aroused  the  opposition  of  large 
land-owners  and  cattle  kings  in  the  West,  a  result  that  was  not 
unexpectable  when  the  scientific  administration  of  a  public 
bureau  in  the  interests  of  the  country  as  a  whole  clashed  with 
the  personal  interests  of  men  who  were  rapidly  growing  rich 
under  the  unrestricted  use  of  public  resources;  and  unhappily, 
at  about  the  same  time,  Powell's  wounded  arm  gave  him  much 
pain ;  the  suffering  thus  caused  made  it  difficult  for  him  to 
labor  with  Congressional  committees  as  successfully  as  he  had 
before.  The  first  successful  stroke  of  the  opposition  was  made 
in  1891,  not  only  by  the  reduction  of  the  appropriation  for  the 
year  ending  June  30,  1892,  as  above  noted,  but  further  by  the 
assignment  of  definite  sums  for  the  salaries  of  designated 
members  of  the  Survey  and  for  special  branches  of  work;  work 
on  irrigation  was  not  mentioned  and  was  therefore  suspended. 

The  following  year  was  nothing  less  than  disastrous.  The 
appropriation  for  the  year  ending  June  30,  1893,  voted  at  the 
late  date  of  August  5,  1892,  fell  to  $430,000;  definite  sums 
were  assigned  to  work  and  salaries  as  before ;  but  now  four- 
teen stated  salaries  were  discontinued,  and  at  the  same  time 
the  amount  of  money  assigned  to  topographic  surveys  was  so 
large  a  part  of  the  total  that  the  balance  left  for  geology  was 
scanty.  Field  work  was  in  active  progress  by  a  number  of 
divisions  of  the  geological  branch  when  this  blow  fell.  It  was 
stopped  by  telegraphic  orders,  and  the  workers  were  directed 
to  prepare  records  already  in  hand  for  publication,  or  at  least 
to  put  their  material  into  systematic  shape,  so  that  it  might  be 
used  later.  Many  salaries  that  were  not  cut  off  entirely  were 
seriously  reduced;  some  members  of  the  Survey  voluntarily 
worked  through  the  following  winter  on  small  pay  or  no  pay. 
It  was  a  time  of  distress.  The  next  year  the  appropriation 
was  raised  to  nearly  $500,000 ;  but  the  volume  in  which  this  is 
announced  opens  with  a  page  from  Powell  to  his  collaborators, 

57 


NATIONAL   ACADEMY   BIOGRAPHICAL    MEMOIRS — VOL.   VIII 

taking  leave  of  them;  his  resignation,  to  take  effect  June  30, 
1894,  had  been  announced  some  months  before.     The  burden 
of  his  work  had  grown,  and  its  difficulties  had  been  aggra- 
V    vated  by  antagonism;  his  poor  health  did  not  allow  him  to 
suffer  the  irritation  of  conflicts ;  his  withdrawal  from  the  Sur- 
vey was  made  "necessary  by  painful  disability,"  and  he  de- 
voted himself  thenceforward  to  the  simpler  duties' of  the  Bu- 
•  /  reau  °f  Ethnology,  of  which  he  continued  to  be  the  chief. 

Powell's  administration  of  the  Survey  was  extraordinary  in 
many  respects.  He  was  a  strong,  independent,  and  aggressive 
leader,  as  was  to  be  expected  in  view  of  his  freely  expressed 
indifference  to  traditions  and  conventionalities.  He  was  truly 
a  director  by  nature,  and  so  confident  of  his  power  that  he 
never  hesitated  to  appoint  able  men  as  his  subordinates.  His 
authority  was  maintained  without  resort  to  the  formalities  of 
rank;  indeed,  he  replaced  with  a  jovial  comradeship  the  lofty 
inaccessibility  not  unknown  in  some  official  bureaus,  American 
as  well  as  European.  He  had  a  keen  sense  of  justice.  I  well 
remember  the  outburst  of  indignation  with  which  he  replied 
at  a  scientific  meeting  to  a  speaker  who  had  referred  unfairly 
to  the  work  of  an  absent  colleague.  He  felt  a  warm  personal 
interest  in  the  work  of  his  associates  ;  more  than  one  junior  has 
felt  the  cheer  of  his  sympathetic  appreciation.  He  attached 
the  members  of  the  Survey  to  its  service  and  secured  their  de- 
voted and  loyal  support  because  he  was  helpful,  trustful,  and 
encouraging  to  them — when  he  was  convinced  that  he  had  good 
grounds  for  being  so.  He  felt  a  personal  solicitude  for  the 
future  of  the  workers  in  the  Survey  that  outlasted  his  director- 
ship. Withdrawal  from  office  under  a  sense  of  disappointment 
was  a  sad  ending  to  the  vast  work  of  creation  and  organiza- 
tion that  Powell  had  guided  almost  from  its  beginning ;  but  he 
had  at  least  in  the  decade  that  followed  the  satisfaction  of  see- 
ing the  return  of  the  Survey  to  a  period  of  growth  and  pros- 
perity under  the  direction  of  his  successor,  who  had  long  been 
associated  with  him  and  to  whom  at  the  end  of  a  difficult  piece 
of  work  ten  years  earlier  he  had  said — the  older  man  putting 
his  one  arm  around  the  younger — "My  boy,  you  have  done 
well ;  I  hope  you  will  stay  with  us." 

58 


JOHN   WESI.KY    I'OWKI.I. — DAVIS 
RESIDENCE   IN    WASHINGTON. 

We  may  here  introduce  between  the  accounts  of  Powell's 
work  in  Geology  and  in  Ethnology  a  brief  statement  of  his 
personal  relations  with  his  associates  and  of  his  large  share  in 
organizing  and  supporting  scientific  societies  in  the  National 
Capital.  His  Washington  home  at  910  M  street  N.  W.  was 
for  many  years  recognized  as  a  scientific  center  not  only  for 
employees  under  his  charge,  but  for  the  scientific  men  of 
Washington  in  general.  It  was  in  his  parlor  that  the  Cosmos  j 
Club  was  organized  in  1878;  he  was  then  made  its  temporary  ! 
president  and  became  formally  the  president  of  the  perma- 
nent organization  on  January  10,  i88i.l  The  club  has  now 
more  than  600  resident  and  350  non-resident  members,  and 
includes  therein  most  of  the  representatives  of  science,  litera- 
ture, and  art  in  the  National  Capital.  Through  the  winter  of 
1883  an  informal  reception  was  held  in  Major  Powell's  parlor 
every  Sunday  evening  for  the  members  of  the  Geological  Sur- 
vey and  Bureau  of  Ethnology,  but  these  receptions  soon  grew 
toojarge  to  permit  of  their  continuation. 

Powell's  large  share  in  developing  non-official  scientific  in- 
terests in  Washington  may  be  inferred  from  his  relation  to  the 
following  societies,  most  of  which  have  their  seat  in  the  Na- 
tional Capital.  He  held  at  one  time  or  another  membership  in  /} 
the  Anthropological  Society  of  Washington,  of  which  he  was 
a  founder,  and  also  President  in  1879-1882,  1883-1885,  1887, 
and  1895 ;  in  the  American  Anthropological  Association,  of 
which  he  was  a  founder;  in  the  "Washington  Academy  of  Sci- 
ences, of  which  he  was  an  incorporator  and  vice-president ;  in 
the  National  Geographic  Society,  of  which  he  was  an  incor- 
porator ;  in  the  American  Association  for  the  Advancement  of 
Science,  of  which  he  was  president  in  1888;  in  the  National 
Academy  of  Sciences;  in  the  Philosophical,  the  Biological,  the 
Chemical,  and  the  Geological  Societies  of  Washington;  in  the 
Geological  Society  of  America,  of  which  he  was  one  of  the 
first  councillors,  and  in  the  American  Folk-lore  Society.  He 
was  known  to  be  an  associate  member  of  the  Societe  d'Anthro- 
pologie  of  Paris,  and  a  corresponding  member  of  the  Berliner 
Gesellschaft  fur  Anthropologie,  Ethnologic  und  Urgeschichte ; 

59 


NATIONAL   ACADEMY   BIOGRAPHICAL    MEMOIRS VOL.    VIII 

but  whether  this  completes  the  list  of  his  foreign  membership 
it  as  been  impossible  to  determine.  \ 

ETHNOLOGICAL    WORK. 

Although  Powell  is  probably  known  to  a  greater  number  of 
persons  as  a  geologist  than  as  an  ethnologist,  his  publications 
on  ethnology  and  anthropology  and  on  the  philosophical  prob- 
lems into  which  the  study  of  these  sciences  led  him  are — apart 
from  purely  administrative  reports — twice  as  numerous  as 
those  on  geology ;  and  it  appears  that  his  contributions  to  the 
content  of  the  sciences  of  earth  and  of  man  stand  in  about 
the  same  proportion.  His  active  interest  in  ethnology  began 
when  he  came  into  contact  with  the  Indian  tribes  of  western 
Colorado  and  eastern  Utah  in  the  summer  of  1868^!  it  was 
probably  reinforced  by  Secretary  Henry's  advice  that  special 
study  of  the  Indians  should  be  made  during  the  canyon  journey 
of  the  next  year.  But  more  important  than  its  origin  is  the 
nature  of  the  interest  that  Powell  felt  in  ethnology;  for  it  had 
the  merit  of  being  characterized  by  a  willingness  to  recognize 
other  standards  than  those  of  the  civilized  races  of  mankind, 
by  a  ready  capacity  to  appreciate  the  position  of  the  "other 
fellow,"  and  by  a  sincere  respect  for  humanity  in  all  its  stages 
of  development.  These  are  largely  matters  of  temperament, 
not  of  learning;  they  are  of  prime  importance  to  an  ethnolo- 
gist in  the  office  as  well  as  in  the  field.  Gilbert  gave  emphasis 
to  this  point  when  he  wrote  that  Powell  "realized,  as  perhaps 
few  had  realized  before  him,  that  the  point  of  view  of  the  sav- 
age is  essentially  different  from  that  of  the  civilized  man ;  that 
just  as  his  music  cannot  be  recorded  in  the  notation  of  civilized 
music,  just  as  his  words  cannot  be  written  with  the  English 
alphabet,  so  the  structure  of  his  language  transcends  the  for- 
mulae of  Aryan  grammars,  and  his  philosophy  and  social  or- 
gapization  follow  lines  unknown  to  the  European." 

The  warm-hearted  sympathy  that  was  the  basis  of  Powell's 
success  in  the  field  study  of  Indian  tribes  is  nowhere  better 
illustrated  than  in  the  comment  he  makes  on  the  fate  of  the 
three  men  who  left  his  party  and  climbed  out  of  the  Colorado 
canyon  in  August,  1869,  as  already  briefly  narrated.  The  story 

60 


JOHN   WESLEY   POWKLL — DAVIS 

was  learned  a  year  later  by  Jacob  Hamblin,  a  Mormon  mis- 
sionary among  the  Indians,  who  spoke  their  language  well  and 
had  great  influence  among  them,  and  who  was  with  Powell's 
party  in  the  summer  of  1870  on  the  plateau  north  of  the  can- 
yon, not  far  from  the  point  where  the  three  men  had  ascended_ 
from  the  river  the  year  before.  "They  came  upon  the  Indian 
village  almost  starved  and  exhausted  with  fatigue.  They  were 
supplied  with  food  and  put  on  their  way  to  the  settlements. 
Shortly  after  they  had  left,  an  Indian  from  the  east  side  of  the 
Colorado  arrived  at  the  villagfe  and  told  them  about  a  number 
of  miners  having  killed  a  squaw  in  a  drunken  brawl,  and  no 
doubt  these  were  the  men.  No  person  had  ever  come  down 
the  canyon ;  that  was  impossible ;  they  were  trying  to  hide  their 
guilt.  ...  In  this  way  he  worked  them  into  a  great  rage. 
They  followed,  surrounded  the  men  in  ambush  and  filled  them 
full  of  arrows."  Powell's  comment  on  this  pitiful  story  con- 
tains not  a  thought  of  revenge  or  even  of  punishment ;  he  real- 
ized that  primitive  and  advanced  men  do  not  think  alike  and 
he  respected  the  Indians'  idea  of  justice.  "That  night  I  slept 
in  peace,  although  these  murderers  of  my  men,  and  their 
friends,  the  U-in-ka-rets,  were  sleeping  not  five  hundred  yards 
away.  While  we  were  gone  to  the  canon,  the  pack-train  and 
supplies,  enough  to  make  an  Indian  rich  beyond  his  wildest 
dreams,  were  all  left  in  their  charge  and  were  all  safe;  not 
even  a  lump  of  sugar  was  pilfered  by  the  children"  (Colorado 
River,  130,  13 i)-\  Some  years  later  Powell  explicitly  stated 
his  creed  in  thislnatter :  "When  I  stand  before  the  sacred  fire 
in  an  Indian  village  and  listen  to  the  red  man's  philosophy,  no 
anger  stirs  my  blood.  I  love  him  as  one  of  my  kind"  (Philo- 
sophical Bearings  of  Darwinism,  Washington,  1882,  p.  12). 
!  Powell's  interest  in  Indian  customs  and  languages  was  at 
first  combined  with  some  attention  to  problems  in  the  practical 
administration  of  Indian  affairs  ;  he  was  appointed  by  Congress 
in  1872  (?)  a  commissioner  to  examine  the  condition  of  cer- 
tain tribes  in  the  Far  West,  and  his  report,  made  jointly  with 
G.  W.  Ingalls,  was  his  first  ethnological  publication  (1874). 
It  was  at  this  time  that  he  discussed  the  "causes  and  remedies" 
for  the  inevitable  conflict  that  arises  from  the  spread  of  civil- 
ization over  a  region  previously  inhabited  by  savages ;"  but  in 

61 


NATIONAL,  ACADEMY  BIOGRAPHICAL,   MEMOIRS — VOL.   VIII 

his  later  studies  the  Indians,  unmodified  by  contact  with  the 
whites,  were  his  subject. 

Secretary  Henry,  of  the  Smithsonian  Institution,  who  had 
early  given  Powell  encouragement  and  assistance  in  the  direc- 
tion of  ethnology,  was  greatly  impressed  with  the  exploration 
of  the  Colorado,  regarding  the  report  upon  which  he  later 
wrote :  "The  whole  work  will  do  honor  to  the  appreciation  by 
the  Government  of  scientific  information  of  this  kind,  as  well 
as  of  the  ability  and  perseverance  of  Professor  Powell  and  his 
assistants."  It  was  evidently  on  the  basis  of  this  good  opinion 
that,  after  Powell  had  turned  from  geology  to  ethnology  in  the 
early  '/o's,  much  material  collected  by  the  Smithsonian  Institu- 
tion was  placed  in  his  hands :  this  included  670  Indian  vocabu- 
laries which  had  previously  been  submitted  to  Trumbull,  and 
it  was  upon  this  extended  basis  that  Powell  prepared  his  first 
"Introduction  to  the  study  of  Indian  languages"  (1877),  an 
enlarged  edition  of  which  was  published  three  years  later. 

BUREAU   OF  ETHNOLOGY. 

A  natural  consequence  of  all  this  was  that,  when  the  Bureau 
of  Ethnology  was  organized  by  act  of  Congress  in  1879,  Pow- 
ell was  made  its  Director,  a  post  which  he  held  with  great  dis- 
tinction for  twenty-three  years.  He  entered  upon  these  duties 
with  the  expectation  of  devoting  the  rest  of  his  life  to  them, 
for  at  that  time  he  had  given  up  all  thought  of  continuing  his 
geological  studies ;  yet  only  two  years  later  he  was  at  the  head 
of  the  Geological  Survey,  as  has  already  been  told.  It  is  as- 
tonishing that  he  could,  for  a  period  of  twelve  years,  so  ably 
direct  both  these  important  organizations ;  it  is  natural  enough 
that,  after  having  resigned  his  place  as  Director  of  the  Geo- 
logical Survey  in  1894,  he  should  continue  until  the  end  of  his 
life  in  charge  of  his  other  and  less  onerous  duties.  If  the 
Bureau  of  Ethnology  did  not  reach  the  ideal  development  that 
he  had  contemplated  and  hoped,  it  nevertheless  gained  a  highly 
respected  scientific  position.  It  was  administered  at  no  great 
cost;  the  appropriations  ran  from  $20,000  at  the  outset  to 
$50,000  in  the  last  year  of  Powell's  administration ;  the  appro- 
priation bill  sometimes  contained  the  thrifty  item  that  "not 

62 


JOHN  WESLEY   POWELL — DAVIS 

exceeding  one  thousand  dollars  may  be  used  for  rent  of  build- 
ing." The  object  of  the  Bureau,  as  denned  in  its  reports,  was 
the  prosecution  of  research  by  the  direct  employment  of  schol- 
ars and  specialists  in  the  Bureau  itself,  and  by  the  promotion 
of  research  by  collaborators  elsewhere  through  the  country. 
As  far  as  the  general  progress  of  ethnology  was  concerned, 
Powell's  great  service  here,  as  in  geology,  lay  in  organizing  a 
corps  of  experts,  in  providing  opportunity  for  their  steady 
work  under  good  conditions,  in  directing  their  work  wisely, 
and  in  securing  assurance  of  fitting  publication  for  their  re-  s^ 
suits.  In  the  opinion  of  an  experienced  Washington  official; 
Powell  worked  little  less  than  a  revolution  in  educating  Con- 
gress to  bring  the  trained  scientific  expert  into  Government 
research.  Twenty-three  large  volumes  of  Annual  Reports  of 
the  Bureau,  issued  under  Powell's  direction,,  mark  an  epoch  in 
American  ethnology.  But  besides  organizing  this  important 
Bureau,  Powell  took  a  leading  part  in  its  work.  He  gave 
much  thought  for  many  years,  as  well  as  all  the  time  that  he 
could  spare,  to  problems  connected  with  the  life  and  customs 
of  the  American  Indian;  his  favorite  subjects  for  essays  and 
addresses  were  chosen  from  topics  of  the  same  nature  and 
from  the  philosophical  problems  to  which  they  led. 

INDIAN  LANGUAGES  AND  MYTHOLOGY. 
I 

Powell's  attention  was  early  turned  to  the  speech  of  Indian 
tribes,  because  he  felt  that  a  knowledge  of  languages  was 
fundamental  in  gaining  an  understanding  of  other  and  more 
important  characteristics — namely,  thoughts  and  acts  as  em- 
bodied in  customs,  institutions,  and  religions.  An  elaborate 
Bibliography  of  North  American  Philology  was  undertaken  by 
his  associate,  Pilling,  and  Powell  himself  gave  much  time  to 
the  study  of  Indian  tongues  in  the  field  and  office;  the  mono- 
graph on  Indian  linguistic  families,  to  which  these  studies  led, 
is  further  considered  below. 

In  the  First  Annual  Report  of  the  Bureau  of  Ethnology  for 
1879-1880  (1881)  Powell's  strong  bent  toward  the  treatment 
of  problems  in  generalized  form  is  indicated  by  his  discussing 
so  large  a  subject  as  the  "Evolution  of  language"  in  an  essay 

63 


. 


NATIONAL   ACADEMY   BIOGRAPHICAL    MEMOIRS VOL.    VIII 

that  had  previously '  served  him  as  presidential  address  be- 
fore the  Anthropological  Society  of  Washington  in  1880.  It 
treats  the  specialization  of  the  grammatic  processes,  the  dif- 
ferentiation of  the  parts  of  speech,  and  the  integration  of  the 
sentence,  and  affords  profitable  reading  for  persons  of  classical 
training,  because  it  opens  up  surprising  possibilities  in  the  way 
of  linguistic  structure  to  which  the  languages  of  Europe  are 
strangers.  "Many  conditions  and  qualifications  appear  in  the 
verb  [of  the  Indian  languages]  which  in  English  and  other 
civilized  languages  appear  as  adverbs  and  adverbial  phrases 
and  clauses."  Again,  Indian  verbs  often  express  a  larger 
meaning  than  we  are  accustomed  to  compress  into  a  single 
word;  thus  "the  English  verb  to  go  may  be  represented  [in  an 
Indian  language]  by  a  word  signifying  to  go  home;  another, 
go  away  from  home;  another,  go  to  a  place  other  than 
home ;  .  .  .  one,  to  go  up ;  another,  to  go  down ;  .  .  . 
another,  go  up  a  valley ;  another,  go  up  a  river."  But  "it  is  in 
the  genders  of  the  article  pronouns  that  the  greatest  difficulty 
may  be  found.  The  student  must  entirely  free  his  mind  of 
the  idea  that  gender  is  simply  a  distinction  of  sex. 
Often  by  these  genders  all  objects  are  classified  by  character- 
istics found  in  their  attributes  or  supposed  constitution.  Thus 
we  may  have  the  animate  and  inanimate,  one  or  both,  divided 
into  the  standing,  the  sitting,  and  the  lying;  or  they  may  be 
divided  into  the  watery,  the  mushy,  the  earthy,  the  stony,  the 
woody,  and  the  fleshy." 

The  extracts  quoted  below  indicate  some  of  the  chief  con- 
clusions reached,  and  at  the  same  time  point  out  Powell's  prac- 
tical view  of  linguistic  evolution — a  view  as  natural  in  a  man 
of  his  surroundings  and  training  as  it  would  be  unnatural  in  a 
graduate  of  Eton  and  Oxford.  "It  is  worthy  of  remark,"  he 
writes,  "that  all  paradigmatic  inflection  in  a  civilized  tongue 
is  a  relic  of  its  barbarous  condition.  When  the  parts  of  speech 
are  fully  differentiated  and  the  process  of  placement  fully 
specialized,  so  that  the  order  of  words  in  sentences  has  its  full 
significance,  no  useful  purpose  is  subserved  by  inflection'5 
(p.  15).  He  insisted  that  inflection  is  not  economical,  because 
"the  speaker  is  compelled,  in  the  choice  of  a  word  to  express 
his  idea,  to  think  of  a  multiplicity  of  things  which  have  no  con- 

64 


JOHN   WESLEY   POWELL — DAVIS 

nection  with  that  which  he  wishes  to  express"  (16).  Thus 
judged,  "English  stands  alone  in  the  highest  rank;  but  as  a 
written  language,  in  the  way  in  which  its  alphabet  is  used,  the 
English  has  but  emerged  from  a  barbaric  condition"  (16). 
He  later  returns  to  the  same  topic :  "Men  with  linguistic  super- 
stitions mourn  the  degeneracy  of  English,  German,  and 
French  without  being  aware  of  the  great  improvement  which 
has  been  made  in  them  as  instruments  for  the  expression  of 
thought"  (20th  Ann.  Kept.,  1898-1899,  1903,  p.  CLII).  After 
reading  these  extracts  it  is  hardly  necessary  to  add  that  Powell 
was  an  advocate  of  the  introduction  of  simplified  spelling,  for 
the  distinction  between  its  advocates  and  its  opponents  is  al- 
most wholly  a  matter  of  temperament,  not  of  learning. 

The  First  Annual  Report  of  the  Bureau  also  contains  one 
of  Powell's  earliest  philosophical  essays,  entitled  "Sketch  of 
the  mythology  of  the  North  American  Indians,"  which  he  had 
read  as  a  vice-presidential  address  before  a  section  of  the 
American  Association  for  the  Advancement  of  Science  in  1879, 
under  the  title  of  "Mythologic  Philosophy."  Its  headings  are : 
"The  genesis  of  philosopy,"  "Two  grand  stages  of  philoso- 
phy," "Mythologic  philosophy  has  four  stages,"  and  so  on. 
From  the  second  heading  the  following"  characteristic  aphorism 
may  be  quoted :  "The  unknown  known  is  the  philosophy  of 
savagery;  the  known  unknown  is  the  philosophy  of  civiliza- 
tion." And  then  comes  an  exclamatory  apostrophe,  as  if  in 
scorn  of  our  self-sufficiency:  "Ye  men  of  science,  ye  wise 
fools,  ye  have  discovered  the  law  of  gravity,  but  ye  cannot  tell 
what  gravity  is.  But  savagery  has  has  a  cause  and  a  method 
for  all  things;  nothing  is  left  unexplained"  (pp.  21,  22,  29). 

SAVAGERY,    BARBARISM,    AND    CIVILIZATION. 

Powell's  capacity  to  frame  concise  summaries  of  elaborate 
studies  is  well  illustrated  in  a  "brief  characterization  of  sav- 
agery, barbarism,  and  civilization,"  in  which  he  summarizes 
the  chief  points  of  his  addresses  on  "From  Savagery  to  Bar- 
barism" and  "From  Barbarism  to  Civilization,"  and  out  of 
which  the  following  extracts  are  taken,  with  some  rearrange- 
ment:  "The  age  of  savagery  is  the  age  of  stone;  the  age  of 
barbarism  is  the  age  of  clay ;  the  age  of  civilization  is  the  age 

65 


NATIONAL   ACADEMY   BIOGRAPHICAL   MEMOIRS — VOL.   VIII 

of  iron.  The  age  of  savagery  is  the  age  of  kinship  clan,  when 
maternal  kinship  is  held  most  sacred;  the  age  of  barbarism  is 
the  age  of  kinship  tribes,  when  paternal  kinship  is  held  most 
sacred;  the  age  of  civilization  is  the  age  of  nations,  when  ter- 
ritorial boundaries  are  held  most  sacred.  The  age  of  savagery 
is  the  age  of  sentence  words ;  the  age  of  barbarism  is  the  age 
of  phrase  words ;  the  age  of  civilization  the  age  of  idea  words. 
In  savagery,  music  is  only  rhythm ;  in  barbarism,  it  is  rhythm 
and  melody ;  in  civilization,  it  is  rhythm,  melody  and  harmony. 
In  savagery,  picture-writings  are  used ;  in  barbarism,  hiero- 
glyphics ;  in  civilization,  alphabets.  In  savagery,  beast  poly- 
theism prevails ;  in  barbarism,  nature  polytheism ;  in  civiliza- 
tion, monotheism.  In  savagery,  a  wolf  is  an  oracular  god;  in 
barbarism,  it  is  a  howling  beast ;  in  civilization,  it  is  a  connect- 
ing link  in  systematic  zoology.  In  savagery,  the  powers  of 
nature  are  feared  as  evil  demons ;  in  barbarism,  the  powers  of 
nature  are  worshiped  as  gods;  in  civilization,  the  powers  of 
nature  are  apprenticed  servants.  In  savagery,  men  can  only 
count ;  in  barbarism,  they  have  arithmetic ;  in  civilization,  they 
understand  geometry.  In  savagery,  the  beasts  are  gods;  in 
barbarism,  the  gods  are  men ;  in  civilization,  men  are  as  gods, 
knowing  good  from  evil"  (From  Barbarism  to  Civilization, 
Amer.  Anthrop.,  I,  1888,  pp.  97-123). 

SYNTHETIC   ESSAYS. 

It  should  be  borne  in  mind  that  Powell's  adoption  of  a  gen- 
eralized or  synthetic  style  of  presentation  for  the  articles  here 
cited  and  for  many  others  was  by  no  means  because  he  had  no 
command  of  other  styles.  He  was  capable  of  writing  admira- 
ble narrative,  as  was  early  shown  in  his  famous  report  on  the 
voyage  through  the  Colorado  Canyon.  He  could  present  a 
difficult  problem  argumentatively  and  with  rare  common  sense, 
as  is  evident  from  his  memorable  Report  on  the  Lands  of  the 
Arid  Regions.  He  published  in  much  detail  the  long  stories 
and  myths  that  he  gathered  with  painstaking  care  from  his 
Indian  friends;  he  set  forth  in  a  carefully  analyzed  form  the 
system  of  tribal  government  of  the  Wyandotte,  and  he  had  the 
patience  and  perseverance  necessary  for  elaborate  induction, 
as  will  appear  when  we  consider  his  monograph  on  Indian  lin- 

66 


JOHN   WESLEY   POWEXL — DAVIS 

guistic  families.  Yet  his  usual  method  of  writing,  especially 
in  his  later  years,  consisted  in  the  synthetic  exposition  of  large 
problems,  without  the  citation  of  sources  or  the  mention  of 
particular  instances,  but  with  abundant  imagery  and  seemingly 
overabundant  reiteration.  It  may  be  well  believed  that  pres- 
sure of  work  was  in  large  measure  responsible  for  these  pe- 
culiarities of  composition.  'He  was  ever  ready  to  draw  off  a 
generous  flood  from  his  great  reservoir  of  knowledge,  but  he 
had  no  time  to  trace  the  flood  back  to  its  spring  of  supply.' 

Powell's  liking  for  generalization  had  been  early  shown  in 
his  classification  of  valleys  and  in  his  treatment  of  the  broad 
principle  of  the  baselevel  of  erosion;  but  in  these  two  prob- 
lems he  was  dealing  with  inorganic  factors,  which  behave  in 
the  same  way  the  world  over.  In  ethnological  problems,  on 
the  other  hand,  no  one  continent  affords  a  sufficient  base  for 
all-embracing  conclusions  of  the  kind  that  one  frequently  meets 
in  Powell's  essays;  and  hence  a  reader  who  did  not  look  far- 
ther than  the  printed  page  might  infer  that  the  conclusions 
there  stated  were  sometimes  broader  than  their  foundation. 
Such  a  mis  judgment  would,  however,  only  show  that  Powell's 
synthetic  style  of  presentation  did  not  reflect  his  habitual 
method  of  investigation.  Most  of  his  essays  give  no  direct 
indication  of  the  extended  observation  and  the  abundant  read- 
ing on  which  their  conclusions  rest,  for  Powell  was  a  profound 
believer  in  the  scientific  method  of  investigation,  which  regards 
the  observation  of  visible  facts  as  the  essential  first  step  in  the 
approach  to  theoretical  inferences  as  to  invisible  facts,  and 
which'  finds  in  frequent  return  to  observation  the  only  means 
of  verifying  the  correctness  of  the  theoretical  inferences.  He 
had  a  great  confidence  in  the  results  thus  gained  and  accepted 
their  guidance  wherever  they  led. 

A  reader  of  the  synthetic  essays  may  sometimes  feel  not 
only  that  their  author  does  not  adduce  a  sufficient  number  of 
facts  for  the  support  of  the  generalizations  to  which  he  rapidly 
rises,  but  that  he  not  infrequently  passes  over  from  induction 
of  generalizations  to  deduction  of  consequences  from  them 
Without  giving  sufficient  notice  of  his  passage.  For  this  reason 
his  essays  do  not  necessarily  carry  conviction  to  one  who  is 
uninformed  of  the  "patient  research  by  the  rigorous  methods 

67 


NATIONAL   ACADEMY   BIOGRAPHICAL    MEMOIRS — VOL.   VIII 

of  science"  that  lay  behind  them.  Evidently  in  such  case  the 
failure  to  carry  conviction  should  not  be  charged  to  insufficient 
investigation  on  Powell's  part,  but  rather  to  the  condensed 
form  of  presentation  which  he  was  forced  to  adopt,  alike  by 
his  many  original  ideas  which  called  for  expression,  and  by 
his  many  administrative  duties  that  called  for  execution.  The 
absence  of  citations  may,  furthermore,  contribute  to  a  feeling 
that  some  of  his  essays  are  too  speculative,  for  in  these  modern 
days  of  international  acquaintance  it  has  become  the  fashion 
for  an  author  to  give  the  source  and  authority  of  every  state- 
ment that  lies  outside  of  his  own  responsibility.  But  Powell 
did  not  read  French  or  German,  and  his  method  of  work  did 
not  allow  him  to  follow  this  fashion,  even  if  he  had  cared  to, 
and  he  probably  did  not  care  to.  He  had  learned  his  lesson, 
and  it  was  the  lesson,  not  the  text-book,  that  interested  him. 
Foot-notes  and  references  to  sources  are  wanting  in  nearly  all 
of  his  publications ;  if  he  had  attempted  to  cite  authorities  with 
any  completeness,  he  would  never  have  had  time  to  finish  his 
work.  Hence  when  one  of  his  addresses  presents  an  evident 
inference  in  the  form  of  an  observed  fact — for  example :  "The 
primary  and  principal  source  of  disagreement  among  primitive 
men  at  the  inception  of  organized  society  grew  out  of  their 
desires  for  the  possession  of  women"  (Presidential  Address, 
Outlines  of  Sociology,  Anthrop.  Soc.  Wash.,  I,  1882,  p.  116)  — 
and  cites  no  evidence  in  support  of  it,  we  must  understand  that 
the  object  for  which  the  address  was  prepared  made  biblio- 
graphic completeness  unnecessary,  and  that  the  conditions 
under  which  it  was  prepared  made  such  completeness  impos- 
sible. 

Sometimes  the  inferential  nature  of  adopted  conclusions  is 
more  explicitly  set  forth,  as  in  the  following  extracts  regard- 
ing the  .primitive  condition  of  mankind,  which  form  a  sum- 
mary for  several  paragraphs  of  more  detailed  statement:  "It 
will  thus  be  seen  that  from  the  five  great  co-ordinate  depart- 
ments of  anthropology,  i.  e.,  from  somatology,  .  .  .  tech- 
nology, .  .  .  sociology,  .  .  .  philology,  .  .-•".  and 
philosophy,  we  arrive  at  the  common  conclusion  that  man  was 
widely  scattered  throughout  the  earth  at  some  early  period  in 
his  history  in  a,  very  low  state  of  culture ;  that  in  such  state  he 

68 


JOHN   WESLEY   POWELL — DAVIS 

utilized  the  materials  at  hand — the  loose  stones  of  the  earth, 
the  shells  stranded  on  the  shores,  the  broken  trunks  and 
branches  of  trees.  .  .  .  And  we  further  discover  that  he 
was  organized  into  small  tribes,  doubtless  scattered  by  every 
bay  and  inlet  of  the  seas,  along  the  shores  of  all  the  inland 
lakes,  and  every  bend  of  the  great  rivers,  and  on  every  creek 
of  the  habitable  earth.  .  .  .  Arts,  institutions,  languages, 
and  philosophies  have  therefore  a  vast  multiplicity  of  origins, 
and  in  tracing  the  outlines  of  their  history  we  trace  the  change 
frpjii^jiiullipH^ky-J^  (Human  Evolution,  Trans. 

Anthrop.  Soc.  Wash.,  II,  1883,  pp.  181-182).  ^Even  in  this  in- 
stance the  last  sentence  falls  into  the  more 'habitual  form  of 
assertion,  although  with  little  danger  of  being  misunderstood 
because  of  the  context. 

It  must,  however,  be  recognized  that  in  certain  other  cases 
the  presentation  of  an  inference  in  the  guise  of  a  fact  is  car- 
ried dangerously  far.  It  is  very  probably  true  that  "attitudes 
of  the  body  developed  into  gestures,  and  sound-making  into 
oral  speech,  and  the. active  organs  of  language  were  special- 
ized, and,  finally,  oral  speech  to  a  large  extent  superseded  ges- 
ture speech;"  and  yet  even. if  true,  it  is  none  the  less  an  infer- 
ence. One  may  agree  that  ''each  minute  structure  within  the 
body  is  in  part  the  same  as  the  antecedent  structure  and  in 
part  changed  therefrom  by  the  force  of  impressions  from  with- 
out,'-' and  that  "it  is  in  this  manner  that  impressions  are  re- 
corded, so  that  the  structure  itself  is  a  product  of  all  coexistent 
and  antecedent  agencies ;"  but  it  is  a  long  step  then  to  assert, 
without  qualification:  "Out  of  this  arises  memory"  (Human 
Evolution,  Pres.  Address,  Anthrop.  Soc.  Wash.,  II,  1883,  pp. 
184,  187). 

MANNERISMS. 

Powell's  independence  and  originality  are  seen  not  only  in 
his  novel  treatment  of  scientific  problems,  but  also  in  certain 
peculiarities  of  his  style  in  writing.  He  had  a  marked  liking 
for  unusual  words,  such  as  "acculturation"  and  "intellection." 
He  seemed  to  regard  the  adjective  termination,  -al,  as  super- 
fluous;  it  is  retained  in  the  five-syllable  adjective  of  the 
"United  States  Geological  Survey"  because  the  title  of  the 

69 


NATIONAL   ACADEMY   BIOGRAPHICAL    MEMOIRS — VOL.   VIII 

Survey  was  fixed  by  congressional  enactment ;  but  it  is  dropped 
from  the  "Geologic  Atlas  of  the  United  States"  and  from  the 
"geologic"  and  "paleontologic"  branches  of  the  Survey,  al- 
though retained  in  the  "physical"  and  "chemical"  branches.  We 
have  already  seen  that  he  liked  to  cast  geographical  phrases 
in  striking  forms ;  other  examples  are :  "The  lightnings  that 
flash  athwart  the  sky,"  "the  coal  mine  is  but  a  pot  of 
pickled  sunbeams,"  and  "then  ...  the  egg  of  poetry  is 
laid."  He  was  particularly  fond  of  reiterating  a  standard 
phrase-form,  in  which  changes  are  rung  on  a  variable  element : 
"It  is  a  wonder  that  the  blows  of  the  hammer  are  transmuted 
into  heat.  It  is  a  wonder  that  the  motions  of  the  ether  can  be 
transmuted  into  the  rainbow.  It  is  a  wonder,  that  the  egg  can 
be  transmuted  into  the  eagle.  It  is  a  wonder  that  the  babe  can 
be  transmuted  into  the  sage.  It  is  a  wonder  that  an  objective 
blow  can  be  transmuted  into  a  subjective  pain.  It  is  a  wonder 
that  the  vibrations  of  the  air  may  be  transmuted  into  melody 
It  is  a  wonder  that  the  printed  page  may  be  transmuted  into 
visions  of  the  beautiful"  (Human  Evolution,  Trans.  Anthrop. 
Soc.  Wash.,  II,  p.  208).  Reiteration  of  this  kind  can  hardly 
have  been  selected  as  a  thought-saving  device,  such  as  makes 
for  the  evolution  of  language ;  nor  would  it  appear  to  possess 
seductive  value  whereby  a  reader's  attention  is  enthralled  in- 
stead of  fatigued ;  it  must  be  regarded  as  one  of  those  manner- 
isms by  which  originality  sometimes  overreaches  itself,  for  it 
turns  attention  to  the  phrasing  rather  than  to  the  content  of 
the  phrasing. 

VIEWS   ON   EVOLUTION. 

Powell  was  inevitably  an  evolutionist,  fully  convinced  of  the 
gradual  development  of  the,  existing  order  of  things  from  an 
earlier  order.  He  maintained,  however,  that  organic  evolu- 
tion, as  ordinarily  understood,  should  be  limited  to  progress  in 
bodily  organs  and  functions,  and  that  human  evolution  is 
progress  in  culture,  in  which  such  phrases  as  the  "struggle  for 
existence"  and  "the  survival  of  the  fittest"  have  no  application. 
Yet  to  natural  evolutionary  processes  he  ascribed  the  develop- 
ment of  all  mental  qualities,  with  their  marvelous  progress 
from  the  lower  to  the  higher,  among  which  "the  wonder  of 

70 


JOHN  WESLEY  POWELL — DAVIS 

wonders  is  the  transfiguration  of  selfishness  into  love"  (Human 
Evolution,  Trans.  Anthrop.  Soc.  Wash.,  II,  1883,  p.  208). 

He  repeatedly  returned  to  the  insufficience  of  the  struggle 
for  existence  in  human  development.  "In  anthropic  combina- 
tions the  units  are  men,  and  men  at  this  stage  are  no  longer 
passive  objects,  but  active  subjects,  and  instead  of  man  being 
passively  adapted  to  the  environment,  he  adapts  the  environ- 
ment to  himself  through  his  activities.  This  is  the  essential 
characteristic  of  anthropic  evolution.  Adaptation  becomes 
active  instead  of  passive.  ...  It  has  been  shown  that 
man  does  not  compete  with  the  lower  animals  for  existence. 
In  like  manner,  man  does  not  compete  with  man  for  existence; 
for,  by  the  development  of  activities,  men  are  interdependent 
in  such  a  manner  that  the  welfare  of  one  depends  upon  the 
welfare  of  others;  and  as  men  discover  that  welfare  must 
necessarily  be  mutual,  egoism  is  transmitted  into  altruism, 
and  moral  sentiments  are  developed  which  become  the  guiding 
principle  of  mankind.  So  morality  repeals  the  law  of  the 
survival  of  the  fittest  in  the  struggle  for  existence,  and  man 
is  thus  immeasurably  superior  to  the  beast.  In  animal  evolu- 
tion many  are  sacrified  for  the  benefit  of  the  few.  Among 
mankind  the  welfare  of  one  depends  upon  the  welfare  of  all, 
because  interdependence  has  been  established"  (The  three 
Methods  of  Evolution,  Bull.  Phil.  Soc.  Wash.,  VI,  1883, 
XLVIIL,  L).  Again:  "The  struggle  for  existence  between 
human  individuals  is  murder,  and  the  best  are  not  selected 
thereby.  The  struggle  for  existence  between  bodies  of  men 
is  warfare,  and  the  best  are  not  selected  thereby.  The  law  of. 
natural  selection,  which  Darwin  and  a  host  of  others  have  so 
clearly  pointed  out  as  the  means  by  which  the  progress  of  ani- 
mals and  plants  has  been  secured;  cannot  be  relied  upon  to 
secure  the  progress  of  mankind.  .  .  .  There  are  always 
too  many  plants  born.  .  .  .  There  are  always  too  many 
animals  born.  .  .  .  There  are  not  too  many  human  beings 
born  into  the  world  in  lands  of  the  highest  civilization,  because 
the  earth  is  not  now  and  never  has  been  filled  with  men  to  the 
limit  of  its  capacity;  the  great  majority  are  not,  therefore, 
killed  off  in  the  struggle  for  existence,  and  there  is  not  a  small 
remnant  of  the  best  preserved  to  continue  human  existence 


NATIONAL   ACADEMY   BIOC.RAPII  ICAL    MKMOIRS VOL.    VIII 

and  secure  human  progress"  (Competition  as  a  Factor  in  Hu- 
man Evolution,  Amer.  Anthropol.,  I,  1888,  pp.  303-304). 

He  continues  to  insist  on  this  point :  "When,  during  late 
years,  the  processes  and  methods  of  biotic  evolution  were 
clearly  set  forth  by  a  host  of  biologists,  and  the  theories  suc- 
cessfully applied  to  all  biologic  sciences,  it  was  discovered  as 
inevitable  that  the  same  laws  must  apply  to  man  as  an  animal. 
But  their  application  was  carried  beyond  the  limits  of  truth. 
Man,  as  a  being  superior  to  the  lower  animals,  was  supposed 
to  have  made  progress  by  the  same  laws — by  the  survival  of 
the  fittest.  No  error  in  philosophy  could  be  more  disastrous. 
And  yet  this  statement  is  widely  accepted.  ...  In  the 
anthropic  kingdom  .  .  .  evolution  of  arts  is  by  invention 
and  the  selection  of  the  labor-saving.  Evolution  of  institu- 
tions is  by  invention  and  the  selection  of  the  just.  Evolution 
of  language  is  by  invention  and  the  selection  of  the  thought- 
saving.  Evolution  of  opinions  is  by  invention  and  selection  of 
the  true"  (Human  Evolution,  Trans.  Anthrop.  Soc.  Wash.,  II. 
1883,  p.  207).  "The  laws  of  biotic  evolution  do  not  apply  to 
mankind.  There  are  men  in  the  world  so  overwhelmed  with 
the  grandeur  and  truth  of  biotic  evolution  that  they  actually 
believe  that  man  is  but  a  two-legged  beast  whose  progress  in 
the  world  is  governed  by  the  same  laws  as  the  progress  of  the 
serpent  or  the  wolf ;  and  so  science  is  put  to  shame.  .  .  . 
That  which  makes  men  more  than  beast  is  culture.  Culture 
is  human  evolution — not  the  development  of  man  as  an  animal, 
but  the  evolution  of  the  human  attributes  of  man.  Culture  is 
the  product  of  human  endeavor.  .  .  .  The  old  grows  into 
the  new,  .  .  .  not  by  natural  selection,  but  by  human  selec- 
tion" (Proc.  Amer.  Assoc.  Adv.  Sci.,  xxxvm,  1889,  pp.  4,  5). 

INVOLUTION    OF    MUSIC. 

In  illustration  of  Powell's  mature  style,  we  might  select 
either  one  of  the  two  addresses  before  the  Anthropological 
Society  of  Washington  already  referred  to,  one  being  entitled 
"From  Savagery  to  Barbarism"  (1885)  and  the  other  "From 
Barbarism  to  Civilization"  (1886)  ;  but  there  is  another  address 
which  exhibits  even  better  his  mannerism  along  with  his  man- 
ner;  this  is  the  address  on  "The  Evolution  of  Music  from 

72 


JOHN    WESLEY   POWELL — DAVIS 

Dance  to  Symphony,"  which  he  prepared  in  1889  at  the  mature 
age  of  fifty-five  years  for  delivery  on  as  important  a  public  oc- 
casion as  arrives  in  the  life  of  an  American  scientist — namely, 
on  his  serving  as,  president  of  the  American  Association  for 
the  Advancement  of  Science.  In  his  constrained  absence  from 
the  meeting  of  the  Association  at  Toronto,  the  address  was 
read  by  his  loyal  representative,  G.  K.  Gilbert. 

The  theme  of  this  address  was  the  simple  one  that 
"Music  .  *  .  .  becomes  by  minute  increments" — that  is,  it 
grows,  it  evolves.  Such  a  subject  might  have  been  presented 
in  the  historic  order  of  the  discoveries  on  which  the  general 
conclusion  is  based,  with  abundant  citation  of  specific  exam- 
ples. Indeed,  this  order  of  statement  was  adopted  a  few  years 
later  by  Langley,  when  he,  from  the  same  chair,  told  in  a  most 
charming  manner  "The  History  of  a  Doctrine."  Powell's 
method  was  altogether  different.  As  us\ial,  he  gave  no  refer- 
ence to  authorities ;  he  did  not  mention  the  name  of  any  worker 
in  his  field;  nor,  for  that  matter,  did  he  present  the  subject  as 
his  own.  He  marshalled  facts  and  inferences  in  such  order  as 
pleased  him  for  his  own  purpose,  gathering  them  from  the 
work  of  other  students  everywhere.  Their  variety  so  evi- 
dently exceeded  the  reach  of  one  observer  that  it  sufficed 
merely  to  refer  them  to  "the  labors  of  an  army  of  patient, 
earnest,  keen-visioned  investigators."  One  of  the  manner- 
isms of  the  address  was  the  introduction  of  long  series  of  sim- 
ilar statements,  after  the  fashion  already  indicated,  apparently 
with  the  intention  of  re-enforcing  the  lesson  that  he  wished  to 
teach.  Thus,  in  order  to  emphasize  the  varied  conditions 
under  which  savages  dance  and  chant,  he  wrote :  "At  the  foot 
of  the  glaciers  they  have  their  homes,  and  walls  of  ice  echo 
their  chants ;  by  mountain  crags  they  have  their  homes,  and 
the  rocks  echo  their  chants ;  in  valleys  they  have  their  homes, 
and  the  savannas  are  filled  with  their  chants ;  in  tropical  forests 
they  have  their  homes,  and  'the  sounding  aisles  of  the  dim 
woods'  ring  with  their  chants."  Some  of  his  hearers  may 
have  been  confused  with  his  abundance  of  rhetoric;  yet  such 
was  the  richness  of  his  subject  that  he  could  not  make  a  short 
story  of  it.  -His  beginning  is  very  simple,  as  if  to  encourage 
his  hearers ;  the  opening  sentence  is :  "A  blue  egg  may  become 

73 


NATIONAL   ACADEMY   BIOGRAPHICAL    MEMOIRS — VOL.   V11I 

a  robin.;"  but  in  setting  forth  certain  fundamental  principles 
on  the  second  page,  he  does  not  hesitate  to  write :  "The  third 
law  in  biotic  evolution  is  denominated  progress  in  heter- 
ogeneity," a  statement  which  probably  left  some  of  his  hearers 
behind. 

After  explaining  that  musical  inventions,  but  not  musicians, 
show  a  survival  of  the  fittest,  he  turns  to  the  adaptation  of 
music  to  environment :  "There  is  music  for  the  dance  and  for 
the  battle ;  music  for  the  wedding  and  the  funeral ;  music  for 
the  theater  and  the  temple,  and  there  is  music  about  every- 
thing: the  land,  the  sea,  and  the  air,  the  valley  and  the  moun- 
tain, the  flower  and  the  forest,  the  fountain  and  the  river,  the 
worm  and  the  serpent,  the  zephyr  and  the  tempest" — thus  lav- 
ishing instances  to  the  point  of  redundancy,  as  if  overwhelmed 
with  the  wealth  of  his  theme.  He  next  points  out  that  music 
is  one  of  various  arts,  each  of  which  was  developed  from  a 
germ  of  another  nature :  "Fetich  carving  was  the  germ  of 
sculpture.  .  .  .  Picture  writing  was  the  germ  of  paint- 
ing. .  .  .  Mythology  was  the  germ  of  the  drama. 
The  dance  was  the  germ  of  music  and  poetry ;"  and  then,  as 
"sculpture  represents  material  forms  in  solid  matter,"  and 
"romance  represents  biography  and  history  in  fictitious  tales," 
so  "music  represents  ideas  in  sound,  by  rhythm,  melody,  har- 
mony, and  symphony ;"  and  he  thus  prepares  the  way  for  the 
question:  "How  does  music  grow?"  Some  have  thought  it 
began  as  a  "spontaneous  outburst  of  the  human  soul  in  re- 
sponse to  the  music  of  the  physical  and  animal  world — the 
sighing  of  the  winds,  the  murmur  of  the  rills,  the  roaring  of 
the  cataracts,  the  dash  of  the  waves  on  the  shore,  the  singing 
of  the  forests,  the  melodies  of  the  birds."  Not  so.  "The  ob- 
jective study  of  music  among  the  lower  tribes  of  mankind,  and 
among-  the  various  people  of  the  world  in  different  stages  of 
culture,  .  .  .  leads  to  a  different  conclusion."  Here  the 
significant  words,  "objective  study,"  must  be  dwelt  upon;  the 
motive  that  they  suggest  is  altogether  different  from  that  at 
first  suggested  by  their  context,  much  of  which  is  phrased  in  so 
exuberant  a  style  and  with  such  a  surfeit  of  imagined  illustra- 
tions in  place  of  specific  facts  that  many  a  hearer  might  have 
taken  the  whole  for  a  flight  of  fancy  unless  these  calmer  words. 

74 


JOHN   WKSI.KY   .!•( JWtflJ,, — DAVIS 

"objective  study,"  caught  his  attention,  and  led  him  to  perceive 
that  all  the  imagined  illustrations  are  merely  the  generalized 
form  of  abundant  observations. 

Although  the  actual  origin  of  music  has  nowhere  been  ob- 
served, the  "objective  study"  of  the  kinds  of  music  found 
today  among  primitive  people  leads  inductively  to  a  safe  gener- 
alization, from  which  the  origin  of  music  in  the  unobserved 
past  may  be  reasonably  inferred.  It  began  and  long  continued 
as  a  vocal  chant,  in  which  the  rhythm  of  sound  was  adapted 
to  the  rhythm  of  motion  in  the  dance.  The  chant  was  at  first 
very  simple,  but  in  time  the  drama  came  to  assist  in  the  devel- 
opment of  more  varied  form.  The  savage  deifies  the  beast; 
the  stories  of  animal-gods  are  dramatized,  and  the  lives  that 
they  live  are  imitated.  The  eagle  "plays  among  the  clouds, 
rests  on  the  mountain  tops,  and  soars  down  to  circle  over  the 
waves  of  the  sea.  The  humming-bird  poises  over  its  blossom 
cup  of  nectar  like  a  winged  spirit  of  the  rainbow.  The  deer 
bounds  away  through  the  forest  and  leaves  the  hunter  lost  in 
amazement.  The  squirrel  climbs  the  tree  and  plays  about 
among  its  branches,  and  springs  from  limb  to  limb  and  tree  to 
tree,  and  laughs  at  the  sport.  The  rattlesnake  glides  without 
feet  over  the  rocks,  and  in  his  mouth  the  spirit  of  death  is  con- 
cealed. The  trout  lives  in  the  water,  and  flies  up  the  brook  as 
the  hawk  flies  up  the  mountain.  Dolphins  play  on  the  waves 
as  children  play  on  the  grass.  The  spider  spins  a  gossamer 
web;  the  grub  is  transferred  into  a  winged  beauty;  the  bee 
lays  away  stores  of  honey ;  the  butterfly  sports  in  the  sunshine 
like  a  flower  unchained  from  its  stem.  The  air,  the  earth, 
and  the  waters  are  peopled  with  marvelous  beings." 

At  first  the  human  voice  chanted  alone;  then  through  long 
ages  of  savagery  and  barbarism  the  chant  and  the  song  that 
grew  from  it  had,  for  instrumental  accompaniment,  only  the 
unmusical  noise  of  time  markers  or  "thumpers"  of  many 
kinds :  instruments  of  sweet  sound  are  comparatively  modern. 
They  came  recently,  when  increasing  knowledge  of  many 
things  led  to  a  contemplation  and  an  understanding  of  nature. 
"The  human  reason  has  acquired  a  knowledge  of  the  universe 
dnd  derived  exalted  emotions  therefrom.  The  boundless  sea 
now  tells  its  story.  From  arctic  and  antarctic  lands  navies  of 

75 


NATIONAL   ACADEMY  BIOGRAPHICAL    MEMOIRS — VOL.   VIII 

icebergs  forever  sail,  to  be  defeated  and  overwhelmed  by  the 
hot  winds  of  the  tropics.  The  lands  with  happy  valleys  and 
majestic  mountains  rise  from  the  sea,  built  by  the  waves  and 
fashioned  by  fire  and  storm.  Over  all  rests  the  ambient  air, 
moving  gently  in  breezes,  rushing  madly  in  winds,  and  hurling 
its  storms  against  the  hills  and  mountains  of  the  sea  and  the 
hills  and  mountains  of  the  land.  .  .  .  Looking  above  the 
earth,  the  worlds  of  the  universe  are  presented  to  view,  and 
their  wonders  fill  the  soul.  So  music  has  come  to  be  the  lan- 
guage of  the  emotions  kindled  by  the  glories  of  the  universe/' 
But  this  part  of  the  address  confessedly  advances  too  rapidly. 
The  higher  phases  of  modern  music  are  European,  and  Eu- 
rope, with  its  civilized  peoples,  is  a  part  of  the  world  in  which 
Powell  was  not  at  home,  as  he  was  in  the  Great  West  with  its 
savages.  It  is  doubtless  true  that  "as  the  blue  egg  becomes  a 
robin,  ...  so  'ring-around-a-rosy'  becomes  a  sym- 
phony," but  the  last  stages  of  this  evolutionary  becoming  need 
another  author  for  their  analysis. 

INDUCTIVE    STUDIES 

In  contrast  to  this  rhapsodic  address,  with  its  imagined  ex- 
amples, its  redundant  and  sometimes  extravagant  phrasing, 
and  its  synthetic  treatment,  it  is  desirable  to  make  reference 
to  Powell's  inductive  work,  which  is  couched  in  much  simpler 
style.  An  early  example  of  this  kind,  already  mentioned,  is 
found  in  an  article  on  "Wyandot  government :  a  short  study  of 
tribal  society"  (First  Ann.  Rept.  Bureau  Ethnology,  1881,  pp. 
59-69)  ;  this  is  a  purely  objective  study  of  the  subdivision  of  a 
group  of  Indians  into  gentes  and  phratries,  of  their  method  of 
choosing  councillor  and  chiefs,  and  of  the  functions  of  their 
civil  and  military  government.  It  is  practically  free  from  in- 
ferences and  theories  of  origin,  except  in  a  page  or  two  of 
general  remarks  clearly  separated  from  the  pages  of  more  in- 
ductive treatment.  Much  of  Powell's  fundamental  work  seems 
to  have  been  of  this  safe  kind,  but  its  statement  was  usually 
elided  in  his  synthetic  addresses. 


76 


JOHN   WKSLEY   rOWEU, — DAVIS 

r 

INDIAN  LINGUISTIC   FAMILIES. 

Assuredly,  one  of  the  most  important  inductive  contribu- 
tions of  the  Bureau  of  Ethnology  to  science  is  the  monograph 
on  "Indian  linguistic  families,"  which,  with  the  accompanying 
map  of  North  America,  exclusive  of  Mexico,  was  published  in 
the  Seventh  Annual  Report  of  the  Bureau  of  Ethnology 
(1891).  The  idea  of  such  a  monograph,  accompanied  by  a 
linguistic  map,  had  been  in  Powell's  mind  for  many  years,  but. 
owing  to  the  pressure  of  his  manifold  duties,  its  final  planning 
and  execution  was  intrusted  to  his  associate,  Mr.  H.  W.  Hen- 
shaw,  then  in  charge  of  the  Bureau  under  him.  Gallatin  had 
published  a  North  American  linguistic  map  in  1836;  but  the 
Bureau  map  was  based  on  a  much  larger  body  of  material,  and 
followed  Powell's  own  idea  of  lexic,  not  grammatic,  classifica- 
tion— that  is,  linguistic  relationship  was  determined  for  the 
Indian  languages  by  similarities  between  single  words,  not  by 
resemblances  in  the  construction  of  genders  and  tensesj  This 
treatment  was  adopted  because  word-roots  were  believed  to  be 
the  most  permanent  elements  of  language,  while  grammatic 
structure  is  but  a  changing  phase.  Indian  languages  to  the 
number  of  several  hundred  thus  analyzed  and  compared  were 
grouped  in  stocks  or  families,  the  members  of  each  of  which 
show  fundamental  lexic  similarities  believed  to  be  inherited 
from  a  common  ancestral  speech,  while  the  different  stocks 
show  no  relationship  whatever.  During  the  long  progress  of 
this  work  some  languages  were  set  apart  which  had  at  first 
been  placed  together,  and  others  were  brought  together  after 
having  been  at  first  separated;  but  in  the  end  no  fewer  than 
fifty-eight  stocks  were  distinguished,  all  fundamentally  differ- 
ent, not  as  French  is  from  German,  but  as  French  and  German 
are  from  Arabic  and  Hebrew ;  for  each  stock  includes  a  group 
of  languages,  and  the  languages  of  some  stocks  are  as  diverse 
as  the  Indo-European  tongues.  The  areas  occupied  by  the 
stocks  in  their  primitive  distribution  are  represented  by  colors 
on  the  map,  and  the  results  thus  graphically  shown  are  very 
striking.  First  to  be  noted  is  the  rarity  of  intermixed  or  frag- 
mentary color  areas ;  second  is  the  extraordinary  contrast  be- 
tween the  great  extent  of  the  areas  of  the  Algonquian  and 

77 


NATIONAL   ACADEMY   BIOGRAPHICAL   MEMOIRS — VOL.   VIII 

Athabascan  stocks  and  the  small-scale  patchwork  of  the  stocks 
in  the  Coast  ranges  of  California.  While  neither  Powell  nor 
his  associates  regarded  the  map  as  final,  it  was  accepted  as  a 
sufficient  base  for  several  important  inferences,  among  them 
that  the  aboriginal  tribes  had  long  been  sedentary  and  not  no- 
madic, as  some  ethnologists  have  supposed,  for  if  nomadic  the 
linguistic  areas  should  show  more  overlapping  and  interming- 
ling than  is  actually  the  case.  It  is  only  in  view  of  this  con- 
clusion that  the  small  areas  of  the  California  stocks  can  be 
understood,  and  even  then  it  cannot  be  understood  easily ;  for 
however  sedentary  the  tribes  of  northern  California  have  been, 
it  is  difficult  indeed  to  believe  that  they  represent  complete 
linguistic  independence  in  closely  contiguous  areas  of  moder- 
ate relief,  without  resemblances  by  inheritance  or  by  short-dis- 
tance intermixture.  Recent  studies  indeed  suggest  that  a  way 
out  of  this  quandary  may  be  found  by  grouping  together  cer- 
tain stocks  which  Powell  regarded  as  wholly  independent ;  but 
'whatever  changes  may  be  made  in  the  original  map,  it  was  a 
great  contribution  to  the  science  of  American  linguistics.  / 

PHILOSOPHICAL   STUDIES. 

Powell's  interest  in  philosophical  studies  was  early  devel- 
oped and  long  continued;  as  one  of  his  friends  said:  "He 
drank  deep  at  the  perennial  fount  of  classic  philosophy  .  .  . 
and  had  constant  reference  to  the  courses  followed  by  the 
pioneers  of  definite  thought  about  the  east  shore  of  the  Medi- 
terranean." It  is  therefore  interesting  to  quote  his  three  defi- 
nitions of  this  elusive  subject  written  in  the  early  '8o's.  "Phil- 
"  osophy  is  the  explanation  of  the  phenomena  of  the  universe" 
(Philosophical  Bearings  of  Darwinism,  Washington,  1882)  ; 
"Philosophy  is  the  science  of  opinion"  (Three  Methods  of 
Evolution,  Bull.  Phil.  Soc.  Wash.,  vi,  1883,  p.  xxx)  ;  and  "A 
philosophy  is  a  system  of  opinions  concerning  the  phenomena 
of  the  universe,  which  the  people  entertaining  such  opinions 
have  observed"  (Human  Evolution,  Trans.  Anthrop.  Soc. 
Wash.,  ii,  1883,  p.  181).  How  significant  it  is  that  the  em- 
phasis is  shifted  from  the  objective  phenomena  of  the  universe 
in  the  first  definition  to  the  subjective  science  of  opinion  in  the 
second,  and  that  the  single  science  of  opinion  suggested  in  the 

78 


JOHN    WESLEY   POWELL — DAVIS 

second  definition  should  be  replaced  by  an  implied  multitude 
of  such  sciences  in  the  third ! 

Powell's  epigrammatic  rendering  of  the  contrast  between  the 
philosophies  of  savagery  and  civilization  have  already  been 
quoted.  He  naturally  found  little  value  in  metaphysics,  which 
he  rightly  viewed  as  the  very  opposite  of  science,  and  hence 
erroneous.  "The  error  of  the  metaphysic  philosophy,"  he  said, 
"was  the  assumption  that  the  great  truths  (or  "major  propo- 
sitions") were  already  known  by  mankind,  and  that  by  the 
proper  use  of  the  logical  machine  all  minor  truths  could  be 
discovered  and  all  errors  eliminated  from  philosophy."  On 
the  contrary:  "It  is  found  that  in  the  course  of  the  evolution 
of  mind  minor  propositions  are  discovered  first,  and  major 
propositions  are  reached  only  by  the  combination  of  minor 
propositions ;  that  always  in  the  search  for  truth  the  minor 
proposition  comes  first,  and  that  no  major  proposition  can  ever 
be  accepted  until  the  minor  propositions  included  therein  have 
been  demonstrated.  ...  As  the  metaphysic  methods  of 
reasoning  were  wrong,  metaphysic  philosophies  were  false; 
the  body  of  metaphysic  philosophy  is  a  phantasmagoria"  (The 
Philosophic  Bearings  of  Darwinism,  p.  6). 

During  the  earlier  years  in  which  these  passages  were  writ- 
ten, Powell's  philosophical  studies  were  subordinate  to  his 
work  in  ethnology.  In  later  years  philosophy  came  to  have  a 
more  dominant  interest,  and  at  times  so  fully  occupied  his 
thoughts  that  in  a  lecture  of  apparent  ethnological  content,  as 
indicated  by  its  title,  "Relation  of  primitive  people  to  environ- 
ment, illustrated  by  American  examples"  (Smithsonian  Insti- 
tution, Report  1895,  pp.  625-637),  he  devoted  a  good  share  of 
his  hour  to  an  abstract  consideration  of  the  difference  between 
"quality"  and  "property."  It  was  in  these  later  years  that  he 
sought,  as  others  had  done  before  him,  to  establish  a  fully  logi- 
cal foundation  for  mechanics,  and  reached  the  conclusion  that 
motion,  either  molar  or  molecular,  is  constant  in  quantity,  but 
may  be  deflected  in  direction ;  but  his  use  of  words  in  this  con- 
nection was  sometimes  such  that  it  was  not  easy  to  follow  his 
meaning;  he  wrote,  for  example:  "When  motion  becomes  en- 
ergy, then  speed  becomes  inertia,  and  path  becomes  velocity ;" 
and  "When  time  becomes  causation,  then  persistence  becomes 

79 


NATIONAL   ACADEMY   BIOGRAPHICAL    MEMOIRS  —  VOL.    VIII 


state,  and  change  becomes  event"  (Bureau  of  Ethnol., 
Ann.  Rep.,  1900,  pp.  LVI,  LVII).  In  another  direction,  he  went 
so  far  as  to  conceive  consciousness  as  one  of  the  primary 
attributes  of  the  particle  :  it  would  seem  here  as  if,  in  the  effort 
to  know  the  unknown,  he  had  reverted  from  the  philosophy  of 
civilization  to  that  of  savagery  ;  it  is  indeed  curious  to  find  that 
one  long  practiced  in  observational  sciences,  and  who  had  years 
before  recognized  the  necessarily  large  subjective  element  in 
all  philosophies,  should  at  last  persuade  himself  that,  in  a  mat- 
ter so  recondite  as  the  primary  attributes  of  the  particle,  his 
mental  concepts  were  really  the  true  counterparts  of  external 
nature,  from  however  much  cogitation  they  had  sprung. 


y  SERIES. 

During  the  eight  years  that  elapsed  between  Powell's  resig- 
nation from  the  directorship  of  the  Geological  Survey  in  1894 
and  his  death  in  1902,  a  subject  that  attracted  him  greatly  was 
the  study  of  human  activities  —  familiar  matters  for  the  most 
part,  so  that  his  explicit  statement  of  them  sometimes  seemed 
like  the  unnecessary  formulation  of  the  common-place  —  but 
his  object  here  must  have  been  to  bring  even  familiar  matters 
to  conscious  attention,  and  to  discover  in  them  their  essential 
and  wonderful  nature,  especially  wonderful  when  they  are 
viewed  as  products  of  long-continued  evolution.  It  was  as 
if  Powell  wished  to  arouse  us  from  our  indifference  to  every- 
day affairs,  and  to  place  them  objectively  in  the  great  proces- 
sion of  the  world's  march,  with  all  the  dignity  belonging  to 
their  ancient  origin.  Such  seem  to  be  the  motives  underlying 
his  study  of  the  "pentalogic  series  of  human  activities,"  in 
which  he  classed  everything  connected  with  man's  "pleasures, 
industries,  in.  titutions,  languages,  and  opinions."  He  saw  that 
the  study  of  these  activities  gave  rise  to  five  sciences,  "esthet- 
ology,  technology,  sociology,  philology,  and  sophiology,"  each 
of  which  is  again  divided;  for  example,  sophiology,  or  the 
science  of  instruction,  contains  five  arts  —  "nurture,  oratory, 
education,  publication,  and  research."  So  fully  was  Powell 
convinced  of  the  value  of  his  pentalogic  scheme,  that  for  a 
time  his  administrative  reports  on  the  investigations  conducted 

80 


JOHN  WKSI.KV    I'OUKU, — DAVIS 

in  the  Bureau  of  Ethnology  were  divided  according  to  it, 
although  this  required  the  division  of  one  man's  work  under 
different  headings. 


TRUTH   AND  ERROR. 

Reflection  upon  these  broad  subjects  seems  to  have  devel- 
oped the  ambition  to  systematize  all  accumulated  knowledge 
and  philosophies,  from  those  of  the  savage  and  lower  barbarian 
to  those  of  the  modern  scientific  world,  thus  "framing  a  cosmic 
compendium  at  once  broader  and  simpler  than  any  previously 
conceived."  He  was  in  this  way  carried  from  the  concrete 
study  of  human  races  to  the  more  and  more  abstract  study  of 
human  thought.  The  field  that  he  sought  to  cover  was  more 
extensive  than  any  that  he  had  previously  cultivated,  and  it  is 
to  be  questioned  whether  so  vast  an  ambition  was  not  less  a 
sign  of  continued  strength  than  of  approaching  weakness.  He 
planned  to  arrange  the  entire  content  of  knowledge  in  a  system 
of  three  parts,  the  first  to  deal  with  Nature,  the  second  with 
Man,  and  the  third  with  Mind;  and  with  a  view  to  giving  his 
results  a  "general,  and  hence  permanent,  character,  the  work 
was  given  the  form  of  a  trilogy,"  and  was  "modeled  after 
artistic  rather  than  technical  standards."  The  first  part  of 
this  heavy  undertaking  was  published  under  the  title  of  "Truth 
and  Error;  or,  the  science  of  intellection"  (1898)  ;  the  second 
part  appeared  in  a  series  of  papers  in  the  American  An- 
thropologist, having  for  titles  the  names  of  the  pentalogic 
scries  given  above,  and  designed  for  reprinting  with  additions 
under  the  name  of  "Good  and  Evil."  The  third  part  was  left, 
unfinished. 

A  devotedly  loyal  disciple  of  Powell's  says  of  this  work : 
"The  breadth  and  depth  of  its  foundations  were  little  realized 
by  co-workers,  still  less  by  the  critics  of  the  preliminary 
essays ;  indeed,  the  modesty  of  the  author  seldom  permitted 
him  to  see  in  its  full  magnitude  the  mighty  task  to  which  he 
was  impelled  by  the  same  powerful  instinct  that  inspired  his 
military  and  exploratory  efforts ;"  but  the  same  disciple  went 
so  far  in  eulogizing  his  master  that  we  must  prefer  the  esti- 
mate of  another  of  Powell's  intimates,  a  man  of  more  even 

81 


NATIONAL    ACADEMY    BIOGRAPHICAL    M  KM  OIKS VOL.    VIII 

balance,  who  formed  his  judgment  without  overweight  of 
admiration,  and  who  wrote  of  his  friend :  "His  philosophic 
writings  belong  to  a  field  in  which  thought  has  ever  found 
language  inadequate,  and  are  for  the  present,  so  far  as  may  be 
judged  from  reviews  of  'Truth  and  Error/  largely  misunder- 
stood. Admitting  myself  to  be  one  of  those  who  fail  to  under- 
stand much  of  his  philosophy,  I  do  not  therefore  condemn  it 
as  worthless,  for  in  other  fields  of  his  thought  events  have 
proved  that  Vie  was  not  visionary,  but  merely  in  advance  of  his 
time." 

It  is  sad  to  close  the  record  of  an  earnest  life  with  an  ac- 
count of  plans  unfinished  and  unfinishable,  rather  than  with  a 
record  of  labors  brought  to  a  well-rounded  .close ;  it  is  sadder 
still  to  follow  a  leader  to  a  point  where  his  leading  is  not  fol- 
lowed— where  his  latest  thoughts,  instead  of  remaining  the  in- 
spiration and  foundation  of  new  studies,  are  passed  over  in 
silence  by  the  generation  that  follows  him.  But  for  these  re- 
flections there  are  two  consolations :  one  is.  the  contemplation 
of  the  great  and  enduring  work  that  the  leader  accomplished 
in  years  of  fuller  strength,  and  of  that  some  record  is  here  set 
forth;  the  other  is  the  loving  memory  in  which  he  is  held  by 
his  many  friends.  Two  of  these  may  here  speak,  as  they  did 
at  a  meeting  commemorative  of  Powell's  services,  held  under 
the  auspices  of  the  Washington  Academy  of  Sciences  on  Feb- 
ruary 1 6,  1903. 

PKRSONAL    ESTIMATES. 

Powell's  long-time  friend  and  trusted  fellow-worker,  G.  K. 
Gilbert,  from  whose  address  the  last  preceding  quotation  is 
taken,  said  also :  "The  glow  of  his  enthusiasm,  the  illumination 
of  his  broad  philosophy,  the  warmth  of  his  friendship,  are  still 
with  us,  and  we  should  be  either  more  or  less  than  human  to 
divest  ourselves  so  soon  of  the  influence  of  his  inspiring  per- 
sonality. It  was  through  this  personality,  too,  that  he  accom- 
plished much  of  his  work  for  science.  Gathering  about  him 
the  ablest  men  he  could  secure,  he  was  yet  always  the  intel- 
lectual leader,  and  few  of  his  colleagues  could  withstand  the 
influence  of  his  master  mind.  Phenomenally  fertile  in  ideas, 
he  was  absolutely  free  in  their  communication,  with  the  result 

82 


JOHN    WESI.KY    I'OWKLL DAVIS 

that  many  of  his  suggestions — a  number  which  never  can  be 
known — were  unconsciously  appropriated  by  his  associates  and 
incorporated  in  their  published  results.  .  .  .  The  scien- 
tific product  which  he  directly  and  indirectly  inspired  may 
equal,  or  even  exceed,  that  which  stands  in  his  own  name." 

The  Secretary  of  the  Smithsonian  Institution,  S.  P.  Langley, 
spoke  of  Powell  in  part  as  follows :  "Wherever  I  have  been 
with  him,  in  whatever  surroundings,  I  think  I  have  been  more 
impressed  with  the  simplicity  and  self-comprised  nature  of  his 
character  than  even  with  the  complexity  of  his  knowledge  and 
achievement.  He  was  to  me  not  so  much  one  of  .the  common 
figures  of  daily  life,  as  one  of  Plutarch's  men.  .  .  .  Sin- 
cere he  was,  and  truthful  to  the  point  of  being  unable  to  bring 
himself  to  hint  the  thing -which  is  not,  nor  even  to  allow  the 
shadow  of  deceit  in  his  ways.  Such  sincerity  existing  in  his 
own  heart,  begat  a  confidence  in  others  which  did  not  always 
meet  its  just  return.  .  .  .  He  was  a  generous  man,  kind  to 
others  and  helpful ;  a  combative  and  a  brave,  and  always  a 
self-contained  man,  who  found  in  himself  counsel  sufficient 
for  his  need.  .  .  .  He  was  a  truthful  and  steadfast  man, 
and  one  who  never  deserted  a  friend." 

Powell  died  at  his  summer  home  at  Haven,  Maine,  on  Sep- 
tember 23,  1902,  in  his  sixty-ninth  year. 


83 


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Bldg.400,  Richmond  Field  Station 
University  of  California 
Richmond,  CA  94804-4698 

ALL  BOOKS  MAY  BE  RECALLED  AFTER  7  DAYS 

•  2-month  loans  may  be  renewed  by  calling 
(510)642-6753 

•  1-year  loans  may  be  recharged  by  bringing 
books  to  NRLF 

•  Renewals  and  recharges  may  be  made  4 
days  prior  to  due  date. 

DUE  AS  STAMPED  BELOW 
SENT  ON  ILL 


FEB  2  5  2002 


U.  C.  BERKELEY 


SENT  ON  ILL 


AU6  0  6  2003 


U.  C.  BERKELEY 


12,000(11/95) 


